What Is a Penalty Shootout in Soccer?
The 30-second answer
A penalty shootout decides a game that has to have a winner whether a playoff or cup match still tied after extra time. The teams take turns shooting from the penalty spot, best of five kicks each, one kicker against the goalkeeper, no rebounds. Score more than the other team and you advance. Still tied after five? It goes round by round, sudden death, until somebody misses and somebody doesn’t.
The slightly longer version
League games can end in a tie. Knockout games can’t because somebody has to move on and so after 90 minutes and a period of extra time, if the score is still level, the game is settled by a shootout. (In many American leagues, including the USL playoffs, tied games go to extra time and then straight to kicks.)
Each team picks its kickers. The kicks alternate, one at a time, from the penalty spot 12 yards out at the same spot as a penalty kick during a game, but with one huge difference: no rebounds and no second chances. The ball is dead the moment the kick is saved, missed, or scored. Each team gets five kicks. The shootout can end early: if a team builds a lead the other team can’t catch even by scoring all its remaining kicks, it’s over on the spot, which is why you’ll see players celebrating a save in the fourth round like it’s won a trophy. Sometimes it has.
Still level after five rounds? Sudden death: one kick each, and the first round where one team scores and the other doesn’t ends it. Keep going long enough and even the goalkeepers have to take a kick and it has happened, and it’s glorious.
A few things new fans always ask. The order of kickers is strategy: teams usually load their best penalty takers early and save one trusted finisher for the fifth kick, where the pressure is worst. The coin toss matters twice as the winner picks whether to shoot first (most do; shooting first wins more often) and which goal to use, usually the one in front of their own fans. And yes, a player who was substituted off can’t kick and only the players on the field when the game ended are eligible.
What to watch for:
- The walk. Each kicker walks alone from the halfway line to the spot. It’s the longest 40 yards in sports, and the close-ups are brutal.
- The math mid-shootout. Announcers will say “if he misses, they’re out” and the early-finish rule means the shootout can end on any kick from round three onward.
- Goalkeeper games. Keepers study kickers’ habits for days, dance on the line, and delay the walk. One save is usually the difference.
- Fifth kickers. Teams save a cool head for kick number five. When it’s missed, that image lasts a career.
Say this out loud
“Best of five, then it’s sudden death.”
“No rebounds in a shootout and the kick is the whole play.”
“They can win it right here if the keeper saves this.”
