What is a penalty shootout in football?
How does a penalty shootout work?
The referee begins with a coin toss: one decides the goal at which the kicks are taken, the other decides which team kicks first. The teams then alternate through five kicks each, under the same rules as an in-game penalty with one difference: the taker may not play a rebound, so every kick is a single act.
The shootout ends the moment it is mathematically settled. If one team builds a lead the other cannot match even by scoring all its remaining kicks, the rest are never taken. If the teams are level after five kicks apiece, the shootout enters sudden death: one kick each per round, with the match ending whenever a round finishes with a difference.
Who can take a kick in a penalty shootout?
Eligibility is frozen at the final whistle of extra time: only players on the pitch at that moment may participate, and nobody from the bench can join. The goalkeeper may take a kick like anyone else. A keeper who gets injured during the shootout may be replaced by a substitute keeper, but only if the team still has a substitution available; that is the shootout's single substitution exception.
Each team sets its own kicking sequence and need not reveal it, but no player may kick a second time until every eligible teammate has kicked once. If sudden death stretches on, the order simply cycles back to the start. The psychology of the sequence is a discipline in itself, and where a team places its most reliable takers is a genuine coaching decision.
Do shootout goals count in the score?
No. The shootout is not part of the match but a method of deciding an outcome after it: the game officially ends as a draw at the score reached after extra time, and that is how the record books show it. The shootout score is listed separately; it decides who advances or lifts the trophy, but it never changes the match result.
For the same reason, goals scored in a shootout are not added to a player's goal tally or to top-scorer standings, and a goalkeeper's shootout saves sit apart from regular save counts. A penalty scored during the match itself, by contrast, is an ordinary goal and enters every statistic.
This term in Shutli
A match that reaches a shootout is usually the product of one hundred and twenty minutes of near-perfect balance. Shutli lets you compare what the two teams really created across that time in Live xG Analysis, and you can follow the knockout paths and pairings that produce these occasions on the Tournaments page.