It was almost 25 years ago to the day.

A Wednesday evening in London's Wembley Stadium: 75,900 spectators on site and millions on the screens hold their breath as the semi-finals of the European Football Championship have to be decided on penalties.

The first four shooters on both sides hit the goal.

Then Gareth Southgate runs - and fails at the German goalkeeper.

Shortly afterwards, Andi meets Möller and makes football history.

Johannes Pennekamp

Responsible editor for economic reporting, responsible for “Die Lounge”.

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    Tomorrow, Tuesday, it could be that time again at Wembley. This time England and Germany meet in the round of 16. If no decision is made after 90 minutes plus extra time, the penalty kicks must decide again. Whoever wins the thriller is above all luck and chance. At least that is what spectators, players and coaches have assumed so far. And even researchers could not see any clear patterns in hundreds of penalty shootouts. For a long time it was assumed that the team that was allowed to start with the first shooter had an advantage. The thesis behind it: Whoever hits first, puts the opponent under additional pressure, so that he trembles even more than before - and shoots. However, evaluations by economists refuted the thesis. The first shot therefore gives no advantage; in other sports,in which there are also "shootouts", the first shot even turned out to be a disadvantage.

    Courage is a good advisor

    Recently, a trio of researchers led by behavioral economist Matthias Sutter from Bonn took an important step forward.

    The director of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods and his co-authors scrutinized almost 100 penalty shoot-outs at world and European championships and top European competitions.

    The economists analyzed neither the shooting technique nor the market value of the players, but something that happened before the first shot.

    Then the referee tosses a coin in the presence of the captains of both teams.

    The captain who wins can decide whether his team starts or lets the opponent go first.

    The first important finding: the victorious captain only chooses the option of the first shot every second time.

    There seems to be no conviction among the players that this is the more promising strategy.

    The new numbers seem to prove exactly that: If the captain chooses the first shot, the team wins about six out of ten penalty shootouts.

    On closer inspection, however, it was found that it is just as promising to let the opponent go first.

    If the captain chooses the second shot, his team wins more than 60 percent of the time.

    When the researchers only evaluated the most important tournaments, winning the coin toss actually increased the subsequent probability of victory to two-thirds - regardless of which option the captain chose.

    The coin toss already decides

    The researchers explain the difference by saying that the winners of the election have a strategic advantage.

    If, for example, you are of the opinion that your goalkeeper is stronger than the opponent's, it may make sense not to take the first shot.

    In fact, they found in the data that goalkeepers who were deliberately sent into the goal first defused more than 16 percent of the penalties.

    The opponent's goalkeeper, on the other hand, went out of the gate victoriously in less than 10 percent of the cases.

    "So when a captain decides to shoot second and let his own goalkeeper start first, the goalkeeper makes the main difference and leads his team to victory more often," the researchers conclude in their work, which was published in the spring in the journal Games and Economic Behavior was published.

    On the other hand, if the captains trust the nerves of their shooters more than their goalkeeper, it can apparently also increase the probability of victory to go first and increase the pressure on the opponent directly. The outcome of the penalty shoot-out actually has something to do with luck and chance - just different than previously thought. 25 years ago at Wembley Stadium, however, the toss of the coin could not have played a role. Gareth Southgate, now England coach, must have had other reasons for the missed shot: The coin toss was only introduced in 2003.