Why left footed players score more penalties

In the last five years, the Premier League has recorded that left footed players have a higher success rate of scoring their penalties.

And while the assumption may be that those left footed players have just been better penalty takers, the difference between them hasn’t been made up of shots hit off target, but actually the rate at which goalkeepers save their shots.

Because goalkeepers in the Prem have been able to save 14.5% of right footed penalties, but only 8.7% of left footed ones.

And one theory to make sense of this is the fact that only around 20% of all footballers are left footed, therefore goalkeepers are more frequently practicing penalties against right footed players.

So when a left footed player steps up for a pen, the angles and trajectories are completely flipped and goalkeepers aren’t as well prepared to save them.