The Interview: Geir Jordet
The Norwegian soccer psychology researcher goes in depth on the psychology of penalties and other innovations in the sport today
This is the time of the year when we see a lot more penalty shootouts to decide games. So I thought it would be a good occasion to interview Geir Jordet, who has put out some of the year’s most intriguing Twitter threads on penalties and other psychology topics in the global game. I learned a lot from our interview below.
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Grant Wahl:
Our guest now is Geir Jordet. He's a soccer psychology researcher, consultant, speaker and a professor at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences. You can find him on Twitter at @geirjordet. Geir, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Geir Jordet:
My pleasure being here, Grant, thank you.
Grant Wahl:
So you are regularly one of the most interesting soccer people I follow on Twitter, which is one really nice thing about Twitter is discovering new and interesting people globally. And your bio on Twitter says, "Love looking where no one else is looking." How do you describe what you do?
Geir Jordet:
Yeah, good question. So I guess, above all, I'm a football psychology researcher and that bio statement, I think, is just a reflection of I like trying to look at what happens in the edges of the action. When everyone looks at the ball, I want to look away from the ball. When everyone looks at a shot, I want to look at the things that led up to that, or maybe happen on the side of it. So it's like a metaphor almost for looking at some of the mechanisms that lead up to performance that lead up to outcomes. And I think that's where the most interesting things are, which I think is reflected in my research and lately also reflected in my tweets.
“Would I prefer the ABBA format [for penalty shootouts]? My answer is absolutely not.” — Geir Jordet
Grant Wahl:
So you had a fascinating tweet thread recently, comparing Jürgen Klopp and Thomas Tuchel and how they approached preparing their teams for the penalty kick shootout in the FA Cup final won by Liverpool. What were some of the things that you noticed?
Geir Jordet:
Yeah, so that was an interesting one, of course. So I was looking at the FA Cup final live, and although I've researched penalties for, well I can almost now say decades, very rarely do I commit during a penalty shootout to statements such as, "Oh, now this is going to be bad for them, or this is going to be good for him," and things like that. Because it's always so complex. There's so many factors playing into this. But this time I actually told the people I was sitting with, "Oh, this is not good for Chelsea. This is one up for Liverpool." As I saw this. Now it's not new what I saw, this is something I've seen many times before. Essentially what happened with that is it seemed like Liverpool and Jürgen Klopp had everything decided in advance.
So when the referee blew his whistle for full time, he could instantly go over to the players that they had selected to take a shot and basically get the last-second approval from them. He sealed that with a hug, and that was good to go. And he did that at actually extraordinary fast speed. So after about a minute and a half, this process was done for Klopp and Liverpool. And he could gather the team into a huddle and give a passionate speech like probably only he can do it. Whereas when you looked at the Chelsea side, that was a very different story. So Thomas Tuchel probably did not have made this election in advance because you could see him checking his notes, conferring with his assistant, back to his notes. And basically at the time that Liverpool had finished the huddle, they finished that pre-shootout speech, Tuchel hadn't even started giving his speech.
He hadn't even, it seemed, started telling the players who would take a shot. So then suddenly Chelsea... Probably because he sees from the corner of his eye that something happened with Liverpool there. Now there's a little bit of a rushed atmosphere, there's a little bit of stress there. So he gets into the huddle and he continues to check his notes. And then he does the asking process, basically in the huddle, in a very public setting where it seems that he asks the players if they want to take a shot, which number shot they want to take and so forth in front of the others. And it becomes a very rushed and stressed and probably not the best foundation for that penalty shootout for Chelsea. Whereas at that time, Liverpool were all done, Klopp was all smiles and hugs, and it seemed like a very different atmosphere in the two teams.
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Grant Wahl:
That's fascinating to me. And I guess one question, because you're going to run into some people who might question your analysis like, "You wouldn't have written this if Chelsea had won the penalty kick shootout." But do you think that this made a significant difference because you noticed it as you were watching it?
Geir Jordet:
Yeah, I mean, it's of course what makes the most significant difference? How much difference does it make? A penalty shootout is always about probabilities. And some of these things that we saw here with Klopp and Tuchel, I mean, I will tell you, I've been talking about this for years, that there's a good way to do that, and there's a less good way to do that. I think I published a paper on some of these things back in 2012, so that's 10 years ago. So I would've always said that having your decision done early, making that selection early so that you can spend time on some of the more softer sides of preparing for a penalty, such as communicating with warmth and care and all these things, that will always be good.
But of course there's no guarantee, and there's plenty of examples of teams winning a penalty shootout, or players scoring a penalty, despite all the things they do. And there's plenty of examples of the opposite. You do everything right, but then you end up missing because there's an opponent there that may have the day of their life. So there are no absolutes, no guarantees, but we can work with probabilities. And I try to stay with that as much as I can.
Grant Wahl:
We're seeing a lot of penalty shootouts this time of the year as we always do. I mean, on Saturday in the FA Cup final. And then I was watching the Argentine semifinal with Boca and Racing later in the day that went to penalties. The only difference there was it was right after 90 minutes, they didn't even play extra-time. What should we know about the psychology of a penalty shootout? And are there common mistakes that still get made by teams, by players, by coaches?
Geir Jordet:
Yeah, that's a massive question. So how many hours do we have on that question? Because yeah, there's so much that we can talk about with that. I think for me, most importantly, that teams, players, coaches still don't really embrace is that one, a penalty shootout is in essence a psychological game and it should be played as such. And the second thing is that it is actually a team game and it should be played as such. So the former, I mean, when I say it's a psychological game, it's really about making sure that you have as a player, as an individual penalty-taker, you have as much control as possible over yourself. Including your worries, your fears, your tension, your nerves, all of that. And you need to strive to have as much as possible control over the situation.
And then I said the situation, the situation tends to involve an opponent and the referee, and the opponent will try to make things hard on you. And you need to control that in certain ways. And there are many things that you can do to control both yourself and the situation. And I see players make mistakes on that all the time because they don't approach it like that. They think about a penalty shootout or a penalty kick as one simple individual act with the ball. But it's about all these other things to make sure that when you hit the ball with your foot it has as high chance as possible to actually go the way that you want it. And many mechanisms go into that. Now the team game of it is basically the same principle, that you tend to see a penalty shootout as a string of individual performances, and of course, to some extent that's true.
But if you are approaching this as you just send someone up to perform, then they come back and the next one comes up to perform. Then they come back and you don't think about how do you communicate? How do you support? How do you supply positive energy into the group, either from the coach or staff side or between the players? So how do you basically approach this as a group? Then you're going to make things very hard on those individuals who are going up to perform. And now and then I see teams who do this quite well, but those tend to be the teams who have embraced this part and actually have deliberately done something in advance to prepare it. Because if you don't think about it, then you're more likely to have your emotions get the best of you and you do what's impulsive at the time. And that's not necessarily what's the most rational.
Grant Wahl:
You know, it's interesting because you were critical earlier of what Chelsea did in the FA Cup final, but there was another tweet thread you had about Chelsea being sort of innovative, I think, during the FIFA Club World Cup. When Chelsea had a penalty and this was in the run of play, and sort of faked out the opposing team on who was going to take the penalty, and interestingly Christian Pulisic with the United States men's national team subsequently did something similar and brought what we had seen at Chelsea. Could you explain what happened and what you noticed?
Geir Jordet:
Yeah, so I think Chelsea was the real pioneer with this technique or strategy at least. I cannot remember having seen it before. I just call it, "A decoy penalty-taker." And what that is in essence is that it's a reaction, I think, to what has emerged more and more these last years, although it has always also been there from the beginning of penalty times, but more now, is that opponents are trying to get you off balance. Opponents are trying to play mind games, they're trying to disturb you, they're in your face, they're saying things, they're moving around, they're doing all kinds of things to get you to lose your composure as a penalty-taker. So in the Club World Cup final between Chelsea and Brazilian Palmeiras, Chelsea gets a penalty kick. I think it's... What is it overtime or extra-time or two minutes before the end, something like that. So way at the end.
So it's clear that this is decisive if they score this kick, they're going to win the game and become club world champions. And what you see is Chelsea's captain Azpilicueta, he grabs the ball, steps up to the penalty mark, so clearly seemingly he's the one to take the shot. And what you instantly then see is that the Palmeiras players are swarming around him. Some of them are in his face, some of them are saying some words and they're not friendly words, I think, these are definitely words to get him off balance. But Azpilicueta standing in there, firm, strong, he has control. Eventually the referee is able to clear the path, clear the area. The Palmeiras players and the goalkeeper go away. The goalkeeper on the line.
And then out of the shadows comes Havertz because he's the real penalty-taker. And throughout this whole time, he was standing on the outside on the edge of the box, preparing calmly, just focusing on his shot. He comes in, grabs the ball, Azpilicueta goes out. And basically they've done this whole play that just fooled everyone. And of course the story becomes good because Harvard scores and they become Club world champions. So pretty nice, I think.
Grant Wahl:
Another question I have about penalties is, I remember the 1999 women's World Cup final here in the United States. And that was a full Rose Bowl Stadium, 90,000 people, really transformative cultural event in the United States. Can't believe it's been that many years, but it goes to a penalty shootout, USA and China. And Mia Hamm, who is just about the greatest goal scorer ever in the women's game, doesn't want to take a penalty and has to sort of be told you have to take the penalty. And she ends up converting it, the US wins. They make history. And yet it makes me wonder, and there's other examples of this over the years in women's soccer, men's soccer. Why is it that some great goal-scorers are not good penalty takers?
Geir Jordet:
Very interesting question. And I have some thoughts on it, but before I say that, I think generally great goal-scorers are pretty good penalty takers. So, and that's actually important because this is a simple thing that we've done in our research. We look at the conversion rate for players from different positions. So basically you see then that forwards or strikers, they score more goals than midfielders, who again score more goals than defenders. Which means that there is a skill effect on penalties, also in penalty shootouts, it's not just mind games or dealing with pressure. If you tend to be good at scoring goals, you're probably going to be good at scoring penalties as well. So that I think goes in most of these cases, but then again, why there's some exceptions to that, or why there are some players who are not so comfortable with penalties?
I think first of all, it is of course a different skill. So it's a different skill than scoring goals from open play. Scoring goals from open play is a very complex perceptual motor skill that requires that you have a very acute sense of space. Being able to travel through tight areas, make the right decision of many and so forth. Whereas the penalty is a closed skill. There's much less going into it. So it's a very different type of skill. And as a result, you have penalty-taker specialists who are... I mean, they could be good players, but some of the absolutely best penalty-takers in the world aren't necessarily the best attackers or goal scorers in the world overall. So of course there's a very special skill component going into a penalty.
And then there's the second component. And that is that penalties are scored on about, or almost 80% of the time. Which means that when you go into a penalty, their expectation is that you will score. And that expectation of course brings pressure. And that's difficult to deal with for some of these players. I don't know if that was the case with Mia Hamm. I suspect this was the case with a player, a legend like Johan Cruyff, who basically never took penalties. When he took penalties, he would miss them because he has missed famously in at least one penalty shootout, or he would do the artsy approach where instead of shooting he would pass the ball to a teammate where he had planned ahead that they would do that kind of trick. So he couldn't just take a normal penalty, he needed to take a special penalty. And to me it's cool and nice, but it's also in a way an escape from that pressure of everyone now expects you to hit this simple shot. Now can you do it or not?
Grant Wahl:
Now the format of taking penalties in a shootout, there's been some discussion about this because as I understand it, if your team goes first in the penalty shootout, you should be expected to win about 60% of the time. And you may or may not agree with those stats, so I want to hear that. But there's another format that's been discussed about penalty shootouts, it's called the ABBA format where you go one team and then... It's like a snake basically. And so in each round it alternates between teams that go first in the round. Would you prefer that ABBA penalty format, and what's your take on the 60% number that we hear?
Geir Jordet:
Okay yeah, super interesting also. Would I prefer the ABBA format? My answer is absolutely not. And I'll tell you why. I have two reasons for that. So one, as far as I know, and I have to say it like that, the evidence is not as strong as originally stated about this. So certainly there have been a few or really one big study showing the 60-40. Now there have been more recent published studies with a bigger sample, and there's been unpublished studies I've seen with even bigger samples, but they're not out yet, that shows that this difference is not at all that big.
Some of the studies I've seen show a difference of about 52-53 to 47-48. So still maybe a 1% to 2% or 3% benefit of going first. Other studies I've seen show basically a 0.5% benefit of going first. So just because of that, it doesn't make sense to me to change the format. Now maybe you should gather even more data if you want to do this, but from what I've seen it's not even a foundation to gather more data. So I would suggest that this is not a meaningful change of the game.
And the second thing, but that's of course my bias, is that the ABBA format to me would instantly make the penalty shootout a tad more complex, which would remove some of the simple beauty and appeal of the penalty shootout. So to me it would water down some of the magic that is in the very, very simple format, head to head, very predictable. And so I think that would be a little bit sad to move away from that, to be honest.
Grant Wahl:
Interesting. so pulling back a little bit, what's your background in the sport of soccer/football?
Geir Jordet:
Well, I guess as most people who are doing work in this, I started playing of course. And I was a decent youth player, and I even signed a professional contract with a first team in Norway at the third level at the age of 18. So up until that point, I was on my way to maybe becoming something. I would never become a great player, but at least I was on my way into the adult game. And the very first preseason game I got an injury, and that was basically it. So I never came back as a player. Now what I did do then was that I moved into coaching, and I suspect now there are no official data on this, but I suspect that I was the youngest or I am the youngest-ever head coach for a top league team in Norway, on the female side that is.
So I was the head coach only for a few months and I was nowhere near a success, the team was relegated, no chance. But I did coach a couple of years, and since that I've been in the game. And in addition to my research as an advisor, since I started this, I've been a personal advisor to over 130 professional players, and I still have a portfolio of players that I speak with every week and follow them up, who play in nice, good leagues in Europe. So this is a way for me to stay close to the game. Hopefully I add some value, but I know that I get a lot of value back from being up to date on what's going on at the moment.
Grant Wahl:
That's really interesting. What does that involve when you work personally with players?
Geir Jordet:
So then I work basically as a, you can call it a sports psychologist or a mental coach, so it's really following up on them. I'm a personal trainer, personal advisor, I see every game they play, we speak leading up to the games, we speak after the games, I provide analyses of them that is both about the performance skill side and it's about the psychology side. We speak about things that are going on in the club, in training, you will not believe how many of these players have issues with their cultures, with their staff, all those things, but also sometimes about life. So it's a sports psychology role, but I'm hired by the player and not by the club.
Grant Wahl:
And what are some of the big projects you have done over the years?
Geir Jordet:
You mean research projects then?
Grant Wahl:
Yeah, I guess.
Geir Jordet:
Yeah, so I think the focus of my career has tended to be in the way that I've had a few years, somewhere between three, four and five, six, where I focused extremely deep on one area within football and psychology. It's always been football and psychology. And some of these topics I've kind of gone back to later on. So probably the first topic that I really went far with was visual perception, awareness on the pitch. Scanning where you're moving your eyes, head and body, to see what's around you. So I started this in the late 90s, so a long time ago. And I don't think anyone had done that before we started doing this. So basically filmed players in matches, but we had one camera focusing on each player to give really nice, close-up images of those players.
And then we looked at how they physically went about observing what's around them, looking, seeing, and so forth. So that took a few years. Then I tried to convince Norwegian football coaches that this was important and this was the next big thing. And they would have nothing of it. So they threw me out and they didn't buy the whole setup. That was a bit discouraging. So I went back and I did other things, but then I came back again after 10 years.
But now I came armed with, I mean armed in quotation marks, with examples that weren't Norwegian examples. Now I came with a study that I just had done with Premier League players, I came with studies I'd done with Champions League players. And I could show examples of how these things happened with Messi and Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard, and now things were very different, and that's a part of it where I think that the power of these authority examples are so big.
So that was the first kind of project then that I kept coming back to. Another big project, of course, is what I've already talked about with respect to penalties. I think actually that's where I escaped after I got turned down by all these coaches with my scanning project. So I spent probably five or six years living, breathing and sleeping penalties. I did not do much else in those years, but I was also fortunate in that period because I lived in the Netherlands at the time and the Netherlands had a very deep and disturbing and recent penalty history that was characterized by trauma more than anything else. So they were extremely curious and open to different types of research going into this field. So I initiated a collaboration with the Dutch Football Federation and ended up supporting their national teams. The first team, the youth teams, the Olympic teams going into different tournaments with respect to penalties.
Another big project for me has been very different on effective learning, effective practice environments, youth development, what type of training gives the best results and so forth. Spent a few years doing that. That was when I was also hired in Norwegian football to serve the Norwegian professional clubs on psychology. So basically I was the league in-house psychologist, to say it like that. But that was also accompanied by this project on learning. And then there are other projects also. Now what always is the case with these projects is that what I'm working on right now are things that I will be talking about in two to three years. So the things that are out are always a little bit later than what's actually going on at the moment. And that's, I think, a necessary survival strategy in this type of business.
Grant Wahl:
That totally makes sense. I still remember being in Rotterdam for the Euro 2000 final week. And being with Dutch people watching the semifinals, they're the host, they go out on penalties. And when you use the word trauma, it actually makes total sense now that I think back to it, because all the Dutch people I watched the game with, it was like a traumatic experience. And that night they showed the replay over and over again on Dutch television and Cruyff was on. He was so negative about the whole thing. It sort of scarred me actually just watching how the Dutch dealt with the whole thing. And we’ve got just a couple more questions, really appreciate the time. Who are some of the innovators in global soccer that have stood out to you recently?
Geir Jordet:
That's a fantastic question, and of course difficult to answer. But I think on different levels, so one group that I feel the need to answer, it's a boring answer, but it's Liverpool Football Club. Now, contrary to what people might think, I'm not a Liverpool fan, but I am a fan of some of the work that they're doing. I think that they've innovated in some of these spaces that I care about having to do with data, statistics. My good friend, Ian Graham, who's the head of research at the club, and his department has done some wonderful things these past years. But what I've seen also this year, following penalty kicks in the Premier League, particularly intensely, I see a Liverpool that does things a little bit differently than other teams, and I find that fascinating.
For example, what we spoke about, well, really the Chelsea innovation, which is probably still the standout innovation of the year. But Liverpool, they're doing mini-versions of this for regular penalty kicks, where they have a team of people who basically mobilize to help the penalty-taker, protect the penalty-taker from opponents, from the goalkeeper and so forth, and the way they do that is something that is quite new to the game. So I would say Liverpool is definitely one.
I'm not sure if that's exactly what you asked, but something I've done lately, now I'm back to penalties again, is I've become fascinated with Brazilian football. Now who wouldn't be fascinated by that, of course? But what I've looked at is some of the ways that both penalty-takers and goalkeepers behave with penalty kicks, and I see some innovations there. I tweeted about this too. I mean, the Flamengo strategy, when they get a penalty kick where they instantly put one or two players to guard the penalty mark so it's not being kicked up by opponents. And it's a similar strategy to the decoy penalty-taker by Chelsea because the real penalty-taker then is standing with the ball outside of the area, calmly preparing and so forth. And speaking of Flamengo, I mean, they have a goalkeeper who statistically speaking is the best goalkeeper in the world on penalties, Diego Alves, who also used to play in Spain for Valencia, and seeing him and his mind games when he plays, because he doesn't play that much anymore, but I'll let you in on a little secret.
A few months ago, it was my turn to have COVID. I went into that week that I ended up having this and not knowing exactly what would happen. So I canceled all my appointments, no lecture, no talks, no meetings, no phone calls, everything gone for a week. But then I wasn't affected that hard, so it became a very pleasant week physically. But I took the opportunity to just dig into the Brazilian league and penalty kicks, and I spent a week basically studying that. And it's probably the best week I've had in years. So yeah, I was inspired by them. I guess those are the ones that I would mention. Well, actually the last source of innovation for me has actually also been the teams and the players that I have worked with myself the last few years. There's several of them, and they've become a big source of both inspiration and information that means a lot to me.
Grant Wahl:
Lastly, I'm just curious to know, is there anything about soccer in the United States that you find interesting?
Geir Jordet:
Well, first of all, I mean, I'm very fond of the United States, and I'm not just saying that. I have a lot of family in the U.S.. I've done work for U.S. Soccer, done quite a bit of work for the USOC, so the U.S. Olympic Committee on some of the areas that I have taken part. So I have a certain kinship to the U.S. Now with that said, U.S. Soccer, I must admit I haven't followed that closely. So based off of what I do know, I mean, I would say that potential is a very important word for U.S. Soccer. I mean, the way I see it, it’s massive at the grassroots level, but it's more new professionally. So I would imagine that in U.S. Soccer at the professional level, you have a situation where you don't have the same types of traditions and history as the European clubs naturally have.
Now in Europe, of course, that's the source of a deep connection with fans, with club legends. And there's so much going into that that becomes very meaningful. And you don't have that in the same way. So of course there's a downside to that. But the upside to that is that you're more kind of free. You're not tied down to all these traditions and these ways that we always do things here. That is if you are able to actually break free, because I suspect that people come into clubs and soccer with their own traditions and their own kind of dogmas and ways they've always done things. So it's still a battle, I would assume, to innovate and do new things, but I think you have a good place to start from.
Grant Wahl:
Geir Jordet is a soccer psychology researcher, consultant, speaker and a professor at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences. You can find him on Twitter at @geirjordet. Geir, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Geir Jordet:
Thank you very much, Grant.
Fascinating stuff. Obviously a lot of mind games going on, I'm interested in tactical innovations, like the keeper lining up off center (either a little or a lot). Probably not much public data on that kind of stuff; teams will keep it to themselves.