Does Going First or Second in a Penalty Shootout Matter? ...Middle East

All four penalty shootouts at the 2026 World Cup have been won by the team going second. Does it point to a broader advantage, or is it just a coincidence?

After watching 120+ minutes of football, you might not find observing a coin toss the most exciting dessert.

Fans in the stadium care, though. Win a coin toss for a penalty shootout, and you get to choose the end where they’re taken, to much rejoicing from those behind the chosen goal.

Another coin toss also allows the winner to choose whether to go first or second.

But does that decision actually matter?

For years, the consensus was that going first in a shootout is an advantage. Being able to take the lead and put scoreboard pressure on your opponents surely has a mental benefit, and means they are the ones likely to have to take the dreaded ‘must-score’ penalty.

However, when Rubén Vargas tucked away the winning spot-kick for Switzerland against Colombia in the World Cup last 16 on Tuesday, it continued a rather curious trend.

All four penalty shootouts at the 2026 World Cup have been won by the team who went second.

That’s not much of a sample, but stretched out a bit further, it is now a remarkable 13 of the last 15 shootouts at men’s World Cups that have been won by the team going second (86.7%).

The only shootouts in that time where the team going first have won were both in the 2022 World Cup, when Morocco eliminated Spain in the last 16 and Croatia beat Brazil in the quarter-finals.

Is this just a statistical quirk, though, or are teams getting a genuine advantage by going second?

Prior to the 2026 World Cup, 18 of the 35 penalty shootouts (51.4%) to take place in the men’s competition had been won by the team going second, so almost an exact 50-50 split, suggesting no advantage whatsoever.

With the most recent four, that has gone up to 22 of 39 (56.4%), so it’s only really the recent shootouts that suggest going second is best.

Indeed, prior to the last 15 shootouts, only nine of the first 24 World Cup shootouts were won by the team going second (37.5%), so perhaps that’s where the belief that going first was better came from.

Again, though, that still isn’t really a big enough data sample. We need to look at other competitions.

The first penalty shootout at the UEFA European Championships was in 1976 between Czechia and Germany, the famous shootout where Antonín Panenka dinked in the winning penalty.

In total, there have been 25 penalty shootouts in the Euros, of which 12 have been won by the team going second (48%), so basically no difference.

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There are more shootouts in club football, but what does the data say there?

In the history of the UEFA Champions League/European Cup, there have been 42 penalty shootouts (not including qualifiers). In that competition, there does seem to be an advantage to going first, with only 16 teams winning when taking second (38.1%).

Of course, the most recent example saw Paris Saint-Germain beat Arsenal after the defending champions went first in Budapest.

That percentage doesn’t extend to other competitions, though.

In the world’s oldest national football competition, the FA Cup, we have penalty shootout data since the start of the 2013-14 season. Since then, there have been 75 shootouts, of which 43 have been won by the team going second (57.3%).

Notably, though, given the trend at the World Cup, there has also been more of a tilt towards teams taking the second penalty recently. Last season, there were 17 shootouts in the FA Cup, of which 12 were won by the team going second (70.6%).

When you look at the English League Cup, though, there is far more data to observe.

With extra-time scrapped in the competition in 2018-19 and games heading straight to penalties if level after 90 minutes, we have seen far more shootouts than in any other competition.

In fact, on record (since 2013-14), there have been 211 penalty shootouts in the League Cup.

Four of those from the 2017-18 season were in the ABBA format, where the team who went second also went third, then the team who had the first penalty would also have the fourth and fifth, and so on (not decided by singing Swedish pop songs).

Funnily enough, that format was trialled due to a belief that going first was too much of an advantage, but we won’t count those here.

Quite remarkably, across the 207 League Cup penalty shootouts we looked back at, 104 were won by the team going second (50.2%). So, the competition with the most data to look back at ended up having the closest return of 50-50 of all of them.

What can we glean from all this, then?

While there is something to be said for striking first, having the opportunity to go 1-0 up and immediately put pressure on the opposition, it can also backfire. In the last 15 World Cup penalty shootouts, seven have seen the opening penalty missed, giving an immediate boost to the team going second. On each occasion, the team going second has won.

Indeed, of the 12 instances of a team taking the first penalty in a World Cup shootout and missing that spot-kick, only two have recovered to win – Sweden versus Romania in 1994 and Ukraine versus Switzerland in 2006.

There could be a bit of confirmation bias/placebo effect at play, where teams are aware that going second seems to be an advantage, and just by thinking that, it calms them in a nervy situation, therefore making it likelier they can win even if really there’s no solid proof it’s actually any advantage whatsoever.

That being said, it is notable that of the four shootouts at this World Cup, in only one – Egypt against Australia – did the team who won the toss choose to go second. So apart from perhaps

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