Last night, the 🇨🇭 Swiss football team lost against England 🏴. It would have been Switzerland first entry to the semifinals EVER🥲 in a major tournament. Switzerland played a great game, but after 120 minutes, the score was 1:1, and penalties had to decide. Manuel Akanji was first and his kick was saved by the English keeper Jordan Pickford. Unfortunately for Switzerland, all English players scored and sent the Swiss home. It turns out that Pickford had a list of all Swiss players on his bottle, indicating the best #strategy to save their kick. Next to Akanshi’s name it says “dive left”. That’s what he did and that was the winning move. Great preparation by the English team, #analytics beats #intuition once again. Nevertheless, I am very proud that the small mountain country is no longer playing not to lose, but the team plays to win ⚽️. Being in the top 8 in Europe in football, #2 in the hockey world championships and #1 in alpine skiing in the 2023/2024 is quite an accomplishment 🇨🇭🍀💖
This example has been used many times in the last few days to illustrate the importance of analysis. Sure, analysis is important - but it only helps us in combination with intuition and gut feeling. In order to react to changing conditions. Unfortunately, Akanji was not mentally at his best at that time - simply put, of course. But this is exactly what allowed Pickford to be successful at that moment. Not so much his preparation, the chance is 50%. The penalty was shot very, very weakly. That was basically the reason, no? What I want to say and add is that mental strength decided success or failure at that moment. And not so much the preparation of the opponent. Analysis alone turns us into robots - analysis plus mental strength and intuition really make us unbeatable. My opinion. 😊
Thanks, Stef. Brilliant post as always. Indeed it was a sad night. The question that I’ve got is, aren’t all good goalies following Pickford’s practice, and if not, what do they have that’s better?
Do you think the randomized mixed strategies theory of optimal penalty kicks is correct then?
Stefan Michel - The Swiss can be proud of their performance last night.
Don’t understand that Murat Hakin who was doing mostly everything right that he didn’t bring the 2nd goalkeeper Kobel for the shoutout. That would the English players make nervous 😉
Great post. Strategists can learn a lot from the world of football and vice versa.
I don't get your point. How is this a proof that analytics was a better strategy than intuition? We simply don't know how many penalties could have been saved with intuition 😉
Serial-Entrepreneur and Startup-Investor
2wPretty much standard for a goalkeeper on this level….