After sitting through two hours of play, a coin flip might not seem like the most thrilling finale. Yet for supporters in the stands, it carries real weight. Securing the toss for a shootout lets you pick which end the kicks will be taken at — a choice that often sparks loud celebrations from the crowd gathered behind that very goal. There is also a second coin toss, granting the winner the right to decide whether to take the opening spot kick or go later. But does that choice truly influence the outcome?
For a long time, the prevailing view held that stepping up first in a shootout gives a side an edge. Grabbing an early lead and forcing the opponent to chase on the scoreboard was thought to create psychological pressure, raising the chances they would face a high-stakes “must-convert” attempt. Yet when Rubén Vargas slotted home the decisive penalty for Switzerland against Colombia in the round of 16, it extended a rather intriguing pattern.
Every one of the four shootouts at this tournament has been claimed by the team that went second. That is a limited set of matches, but 13 of the last 15 shootouts at World Cups have gone the way of the side taking the second kick (86.7%). The only exceptions in that stretch occurred during the 2022 edition, when Morocco knocked out Spain in the last 16 and Croatia overcame Brazil in the quarter-finals.
Is this merely a statistical oddity, or is there a genuine benefit to going second? Before the 2026 World Cup, 18 out of 35 shootouts (51.4%) in the tournament’s history were won by the side kicking second — a near-even split that implied no meaningful advantage. Adding the most recent four lifts that figure to 22 out of 39 (56.4%), so it is really only the latest set of shootouts that hints kicking second might be preferable.
In fact, prior to the last 15 shootouts, just nine of the first 24 World Cup tiebreakers were won by the team going second (37.5%), which perhaps explains why the long-held belief favoured starting first. Once again, though, this remains a relatively modest sample. Other tournaments need to be examined.
The first European Championship shootout unfolded in 1976 between Czechoslovakia and West Germany, made iconic by Antonin Panenka’s chipped winning penalty. Across the competition’s history, there have been 25 shootouts, with 12 won by the side going second (48%), indicating virtually no difference.
Shootouts appear more often in club competitions, so what does the evidence reveal there? In European Cup history, there have been 42 such tiebreakers (excluding qualifiers). In that specific tournament, going first does seem to offer an edge — only 16 of those were won by the side taking the second kick (38.1%). The most recent example saw Paris Saint-Germain defeat Arsenal in the final after opening the shootout.
That pattern does not hold across other competitions, however. Since the 2013-14 campaign, there have been 75 shootouts in the FA Cup. The team going second has triumphed in 43 of them (57.3%). Tellingly, in line with the World Cup trend, there has been a more pronounced shift toward the second-kicking side in recent times. Last season featured 17 FA Cup shootouts, with 12 won by the team taking the second attempt (70.6%).
Since 2013-14, the League Cup has witnessed 211 shootouts. Four of those in 2017-18 used the ABBA sequence, where the side that goes second also takes the third kick, and the team that starts gets the fourth and fifth, and so on. Amusingly, that format was tested precisely because of concerns that kicking first offered too great an advantage, but we will exclude those cases here.
Remarkably, across the 207 League Cup shootouts we analysed, 104 were won by the side going second (50.2%). So the competition with the largest available dataset produced the closest outcome of all — a perfect 50-50 split.
What conclusions can we draw, then? While there is an argument for striking first, grabbing a 1-0 lead and immediately piling pressure on the opposition, it can also prove costly. In seven of the past 15 World Cup shootouts, the opening kick was missed, handing an immediate lift to the team going second. On every one of those occasions, the side taking the second penalty ended up victorious.
In fact, out of 12 instances where a team missed the opening penalty of a World Cup shootout, only two managed to battle back and win — Sweden versus Romania in 1994 and Ukraine against Switzerland in 2006.
There might be an element of confirmation bias or a placebo effect at work, where sides are conscious of a perceived advantage in going second. Simply believing that could soothe nerves in a tense moment, thereby making victory more likely even if there is no firm evidence of any real edge.
That said, it is striking that across the four shootouts at this World Cup, only one — Egypt’s triumph over Australia — saw the toss-winning captain opt to go second. So apart from perhaps Mohamed Salah, there are few signs that teams have spotted the pattern and are deliberately choosing to kick after their opponents. Three out of four captains still wanted to start, and none of those three finished on the winning side.
In the end, and we appreciate this may be an underwhelming takeaway, we can probably conclude it does not truly matter whether a team goes first or second. The data, viewed across a broad timespan, points to odds close enough to equal that the calibre of your penalty takers and goalkeeper likely matters far more.
It will be fascinating to see whether the trend at this World Cup persists, and how uncertain captains appear when the referee tosses the coin. Whether kicking first or second, the essential task remains the same: convert as many spot kicks as you can and hope it proves sufficient.
What do you feel about this post?
Like
Love
Happy
Haha
Sad
