This, as you may or may not know, is one of the official theme songs of the 2022 World Cup.

The first weeks of the tournament seem to have been full of goals and upsets, but as we

got to the sharp end of the tournament, it seems to have been full of penalties and penalty

shootouts. England have been knocked out of the World Cup after the reigning champions

France beat them two-one in the quarter-fimals. The captain Harry Kane leveled the game, but

missed a second penalty towards the end of the match. Croatia has throoged the semi-finals

of the football World Cup, beating the favourites Brazil in a penalty shootout.

Argentina are through to the semi-finals of the football World Cup after beating the

Netherlands 4-3 on penalties. I'm Ben Carter and as more or less as soccer ball correspondent,

it's been part of my job to watch every game in the World Cup, even if that's meant I've

had to go and watch some games in a bar with my editor. But I've not done this for fun,

I'm doing it for the data and in today's programme we're going to be looking at the data

behind penalties. First of all, we need an expert. My name is Ben Lippleton, I'm the author

of 12 yards, the art and psychology of the perfect penalty. Good, he sounds perfect. Let's start

our dribble through the data with a look at penalties with the most important number in penalty

analysis. Now the key figure to remember when talking about penalties across the board is the

figure of 78 percent because that is the average scoring rate for a penalty kick. So usually there's

about a two in ten chance of missing a penalty. But in this tournament, if you look at penalties

taken during matches, the success rate is down. With just a few games left, there have been 20 penalties

taken in open clay of which 14 have been scored, which is a scoring conversion rate at 70 percent.

So three in ten are being missed. Why is this success rate down? Well Ben has a couple of theories.

There is a heightened pressure to taking penalties at the World Cup or at least there is something going

...