Best Attributes for taking Penalties

[Gbrexiton]

Composure, Finishing, and Penalty Taking are listed. My Questions:

• What does the penalty taking attribute do that finishing and composure doesn’t do?
• Which of the three is most important? Which is least important?
• What other factors/attributes matter?
• What about free kick taking? Is this the most important attribute for free kicks, or are there others?
  
  
  
   

Edited August 25, 2020 by Gbrexiton

[HUNT3R]

Finishing does nothing when taking a penalty. Penalty taking is the accuracy. Finishing is for open play, not penalties.

Free kick taking is very obviously not important for penalties. Edit: Saw your edit - that also is the accuracy of free kicks. Not even sure if it's a factor, but I'd add Technique to free kick taking.

[TheMattB81]

18 hours ago, HUNT3R said:

Finishing does nothing when taking a penalty. Penalty taking is the accuracy. Finishing is for open play, not penalties.

Free kick taking is very obviously not important for penalties.

If that is the case, then why is Finishing listed as one of the three important attributes when choosing penalty takers? Seems daft if it has no effect. 

[HUNT3R]

1 hour ago, TheMattB81 said:

If that is the case, then why is Finishing listed as one of the three important attributes when choosing penalty takers? Seems daft if it has no effect. 

It's going to be important if there's a save and rebounds back to the striker.

[TheMattB81]

Just now, HUNT3R said:

It's going to be important if there's a save and rebounds back to the striker.

Ahh, that does make sense then. 

[HUNT3R]

20 hours ago, Gbrexiton said:

What other factors/attributes matter?

I would add Body Language to the list of things, btw.

[mattyw_1874]

20 hours ago, HUNT3R said:

Finishing does nothing when taking a penalty. Penalty taking is the accuracy. Finishing is for open play, not penalties.

Free kick taking is very obviously not important for penalties. Edit: Saw your edit - that also is the accuracy of free kicks. Not even sure if it's a factor, but I'd add Technique to free kick taking.

That seems very odd.

Do long shots have an effect on free kicks?

[HUNT3R]

1 minute ago, mattyw_1874 said:

That seems very odd.

Do long shots have an effect on free kicks?

No, that's also an open play attribute.

[fivetwelvepony]

47 minutes ago, HUNT3R said:

It's going to be important if there's a save and rebounds back to the striker.

It still seems misleading. I also thought finishing was somehow relevant for the penalty taking itself. I could be wrong, but isn't finishing presented to you to select your penalty takers for the penalty shootouts, when there is no rebound to score on?

Even still, finishing seems like such a minor consideration. Here is a rough estimate. My penalty taker gets to the rebound on about one in twenty misses? And the average success rate on penalties is in the ballpark of 80%. This means that finishing comes into play for one in a hundred penalties. But when the striker can get to the ball, its usually a pretty simple finish, so finishing ability doesn't seem like a huge deciding factor, especially most penalty takers are also decent finishers. Having someone 15 finishing versus 10 might therefore lead to an extra goal every, what, 500 or 1000 penalties?

 

[HUNT3R]

1 minute ago, fivetwelvepony said:

Even still, finishing seems like such a minor consideration. Here is a rough estimate. My penalty taker gets to the rebound on about one in twenty misses? And the average success rate on penalties is in the ballpark of 80%. This means that finishing comes into play for one in a hundred penalties. But when the striker can get to the ball, its usually a pretty simple finish, so finishing ability doesn't seem like a huge deciding factor, especially most penalty takers are also decent finishers. Having someone 15 finishing versus 10 might therefore lead to an extra goal every, what, 500 or 1000 penalties?

I don't disagree with this. Just stating things as they are.

[fivetwelvepony]

1 minute ago, HUNT3R said:

No, that's also an open play attribute.

I have a related question. Is there a way to distinguish a player's ability for power versus accuracy for free kicks? 

[HUNT3R]

1 minute ago, fivetwelvepony said:

I have a related question. Is there a way to distinguish a player's ability for power versus accuracy for free kicks? 

Not sure. If @Jack Joyce has a chance, he could maybe weigh in on this.

[IbrahimAliMaher]

14 minutes ago, HUNT3R said:

No, that's also an open play attribute.

Seems a bit counterintuitive...if a player can't shoot accurately from open play from 25+ yards then why would he be able to from a deadball? If anything I've tended to find my FK takers with a low long shots don't score very frequently, but the ones with at least 10 for long shots tend to do a bit better. No real statistical basis to back this up (and possibly wouldn't find one if it's not coded this way).

The same logic applies for crossing for me; if a player can't cross a ball accurately from out wide, then why would he be any good from corners? He crumbles under the pressure of having a defender attempt to close him down? 

[HUNT3R]

11 minutes ago, IbrahimAliMaher said:

if a player can't shoot accurately from open play from 25+ yards then why would he be able to from a deadball?

They're very different situations though, aren't they? In a deadball situation, you only need to get it around the wall or over it. So get curl or top spin and you have no one immediately around you that you need to worry about. Imo, that takes practice and technique to curl/top spin. That's different to open play where everyone is moving around you, you don't have 5 players standing directly in front of you and you have to be aware of possible pressure from everywhere. It's similar with penalties and crosses/indirect free kicks.

Leighton Baines was a very good penalty taker, but a defender and not great at finishing - as an example that I often bring up. They can be very different for some players, but others have the technique/skill to be good at both.

 

[mattyw_1874]

6 minutes ago, IbrahimAliMaher said:

Seems a bit counterintuitive...if a player can't shoot accurately from open play from 25+ yards then why would he be able to from a deadball? If anything I've tended to find my FK takers with a low long shots don't score very frequently, but the ones with at least 10 for long shots tend to do a bit better. No real statistical basis to back this up (and possibly wouldn't find one if it's not coded this way).

The same logic applies for crossing for me; if a player can't cross a ball accurately from out wide, then why would he be any good from corners? He crumbles under the pressure of having a defender attempt to close him down? 

Always been the same with corners but crossing is still important for when it ends up back with the taker.

[IbrahimAliMaher]

7 minutes ago, HUNT3R said:

They're very different situations though, aren't they? In a deadball situation, you only need to get it around the wall or over it. So get curl or top spin and you have no one immediately around you that you need to worry about. Imo, that takes practice and technique to curl/top spin. That's different to open play where everyone is moving around you and you have to be aware of possible pressure from everywhere. It's the same with penalties and crosses/indirect free kicks.

Leighton Baines was a very good penalty taker, but a defender and not great at finishing - as an example that I often bring up. They can be very different for some players, but others have the technique/skill to be good at both.

 

I can see where you're coming from but while set piece taking and long shots/crossing/finishing are distinctly different skills, they are not mutually exclusive.

Do we know Leighton Baines wasn't a great finisher? He probably didn't get too many opportunities around the six yard box due to his position, or it could be more his lack of composure. He didn't play as an attacker, but again could have more to do with his positional sense.

He could also take a mean FK, but as a left footer his more natural position for taking long shots would be in a central or right hand side position cutting inside like an IF. Doesn't mean his long shots weren't at least decent if not exceptional.

[IbrahimAliMaher]

10 minutes ago, mattyw_1874 said:

Always been the same with corners but crossing is still important for when it ends up back with the taker.

As above with penalty rebounds that's not a super high probability

[HUNT3R]

8 minutes ago, IbrahimAliMaher said:

I can see where you're coming from but while set piece taking and long shots/crossing/finishing are distinctly different skills, they are not mutually exclusive.

Do we know Leighton Baines wasn't a great finisher? He probably didn't get too many opportunities around the six yard box due to his position, or it could be more his lack of composure. He didn't play as an attacker, but again could have more to do with his positional sense.

He could also take a mean FK, but as a left footer his more natural position for taking long shots would be in a central or right hand side position cutting inside like an IF. Doesn't mean his long shots weren't at least decent if not exceptional.

I can agree that you could make some argument for the different situations to be somewhat linked. Not definite of course, but you could make the argument though that would take a lot of stats and info. I'm sure you can agree that they are quite different situations though.

Regarding long shots vs free kicks - with long shots it's power and accuracy while free kicks is more technique in terms or curl/top spin and accuracy, as an example. It's not quite the same thing, imo. While some players can generate amazing power, they can't necessarily generate enough spin to clear a wall consistently enough.

Finishing vs penalties is a little more difficult to explain for me. With a penalty though - it's just you and the keeper. Keep your cool, close yourself off to the mind games (I'm a keeper too, so I love that!) and stay focused on striking the ball well and accurately. Finishing is you on the move with (likely) defenders around and the keeper on the move too. Also quite different.

[Jack Joyce]

In terms of power vs accuracy for free kicks. A player's strength attribute can determine how much power a player could use for a shot, whereas technique determines how much bend they can put on the ball.

As Hunt3r said, finishing is not used for penalties, since there's players like Jorginho who are probably one of the best penalty takers in the world, but their finishing is average. It's a different skill and there's definitely some mind game elements at play. Look for: penalty taking, composure, ability to handle pressure and keep an eye on their body language to make sure they're not rattled.

[FcPoliFan]

Just unearthing this one, because I was contemplating it in my latest FM24 game and I'm sure it's been discussed before.

I can see the argument as to players maybe being good at penalties and not great at finishing, but I don't see it the other way around. Meaning I expect a strong correlation between the two, particularly if finishing is strong. You can of course have exceptions, but because penalty taking ability is rather opaque for a researcher to establish (you only really see one or two players take penalty in a team), it's hard to evaluate for the whole team.

I would even go so far as to say that the pen attribute is unnecessary when you already have the key attributes that factor into this ( finishing, composure and pressure) and could let the game calculate it implicitly. 

But beyond being controversial, all I'm saying is I don't think there should be players with 17 finishing and 9 penalties - or just fringe exceptions. If they are not good at penalties, most likely it's composure/pressure related, not technique related. It just seems like very few players (regens) get decent penalty taking stat and a positive correlation with finishing might alleviate this issue.

Case in point, avg. finishing 14.2, avg. pen 8.3. And none of the decent/good finishers have more pen taking, which is also rather off.

And I've looked at the scouting list which includes 15k regen players, so age 23 and under: just three players with 16 pen taking and another 23 with pen taking over 13. There are way more with finishing 15+ (272).

Edited January 11 by FcPoliFan