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I have NEVER liked that after 120 minutes of exhausting soccer, a match is decided by guessing which direction a penalty kick is going….because THAT IS what a goalie has to do. ESPN did a piece on what the hardest thing to do in sports is and a goalie stopping a PK was the hardest. Most people thought hitting a major league pitch but; A PK from a soccer kick travels faster (125 MPH) than a MLB fastball A soccer goalie has to cover a space that is 8 feet tall and 8 yards wide (192 square feet to cover) A baseball strike zone is essentially just underneath the players shoulders and the kneecap and 17 inches wide (3.73 square feet) The baseball hitter knows in order to make a good swing the ball will be in this small zone A soccer goalie has no idea if the ball is going to go high or low…….right or left A soccer PK is taken from 12 yards away Distance from pitchers mound to home plate is 60 feet 6 inches The soccer goalie is not allowed to come off the goal line I am not saying this as sour grapes (OSU won fair and square, UVA beat us for the National Championship in 2009 and thousands of other games have been decided this way…..WE have won this way) BUT when you look at how difficult it is to stop a PK it is essentially a guessing game and I do not think a match should be decided by guessing. My suggestion would be to have a shootout similar to hockey. Give the offensive player the ball just inside mid field and have them attack the goal (allowing the goalie to come off the line and defend just like a break away in regular play). I think this would be MORE exciting and involve more skill than guessing. This uses the pythagorean theorem to calculate BUT with the ball only traveling at 60 MPH http://www.khanacade...v/soccer-thiago http://www.scienceof...by-numbers.html