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When Arsenal Women won the inaugural Women’s Champions Cup at the Emirates last month with a 3-2 victory over South American champions Corinthians, many commented that the South American side brought something different in the stands.
They brought drums, they brought melodic chants, they brought a proper party atmosphere. Their team brought something different on the pitch, too — albeit something rather subtle.
When Victoria Albuquerque stepped up to score a 96th-minute penalty and send the game into extra time, Corinthians positioned two players in unusual positions: outside the width of the box, rather “in front” of it.
In truth, they didn’t seem particularly ‘active’ here. They were practically just praying the penalty would be scored. And it was. But it prompted an interesting question: why don’t more teams put players out wide in these situations?
Almost every other teams’ players gather around the front of the box, close to the ‘D’, rather than at the sides. But not Corinthians. They retain a commitment to putting players in those positions, which seems to confuse both the referee and the opposition. Here, when they had a penalty against Sao Paulo, not merely did the referee seem troubled by the idea of a player standing behind her…
… one of the Sao Paulo defenders belatedly tip-toed around the perimeter of the box, and into a position where she could mark one of the attackers positioned out wide.
And Corinthians also do this when the opposition are taking a penalty, although it seems to encourage the opposition to put players there themselves. In fairness, there is evidence of other teams in the Brasileirao Feminino using the same strategy, although little sign of it for the men’s teams at the equivalent clubs.
So why not?
It’s worth clarifying precisely where players are allowed to stand at penalties. There are four restrictions. They must stand on the pitch. They must be outside the penalty area. They must be 10 yards from the penalty spot (which is, of course, why the ‘D’ exists) and they must also be behind the penalty spot. But they don’t have to be behind the penalty area itself — they can be to the side of it. And all this requires some mathematical fact-finding.
The first question is simple. If a player places themselves in what we shall call ‘the Corinthians position’, how close can they stand to the goal?
Well, if they’re in line with the penalty spot, they are 12 yards from the byline. The distance from the post to the side of the penalty box is 18 yards, the same as the length of the penalty box.
Using Pythagoras’ Theorem — and putting the ‘soccer’ into SOH-CAH-TOA — we can calculate the distance from that position to the nearest post. 18² is 324, and 12² is 144. Add them together and you get 468. And the square root of 468 is… 21.6 yards.
A player standing in a traditional position is slightly more than 18 yards from the nearest post — it’s 18.2, because the D ensures players have to stand slightly outside the width of the posts. So the player out wide is 3.4 yards further away from the goal line. However, they are 0.4 yards closer than a player standing at the furthest tip of the D.
Clearly, it’s unlikely that a rebound will drop to a position on the goal line itself (and the goalkeeper or the taker would surely get there first). It’s likely to bounce out, and maybe slightly to the side. But how wide would the ball have to travel before it falls in favour of a player in the Corinthians position?
Let’s take a clearly defined point — the corner of the six-yard box. Imagine the ball drops there. OK, it would be likely to be rolling, but let’s imagine it’s static for the purpose of the calculations. A player in a traditional position would be starting 12 yards away. The players on the sides? Here comes some Pythagoros again: they can be 13.4 yards from the ball. It’s not closer. But it’s not too different.
So, next question: how much wider does the ball have to travel — let’s say, still level with the six-yard box — before the players stationed out wide are favourite to reach the ball first?
Well, not too far! If the penalty is parried (or hits the post, which takes the penalty taker out of the equation) and it’s a race to get to a position level with the six yard box, but two yards wider, a player in the Corinthians position starts only 11.66 yards away. They’re closer than those in traditional positions.
Still with us? The next thing to inspect, obviously, is how often rebounds end up there.
Here’s a map of the last 50 Premier League penalties that were either saved or struck the woodwork, and where the next touch occurred. The red dots (9) are when the goalkeeper held the ball first time, or gathered the loose ball. The brown dots (8) are when the taker reached the rebound first. The green dots (11) are when another attacker has got there first, and the blue dots (14) are when a defender has got there first. The black dot? That’s just the penalty spot. Oh, and if you’ve noticed that the graph is missing eight dots — they’re the penalties which have been saved and gone behind for a goal kick — they’re not recorded here.
From this sample size of 50, there are at least nine examples of rebounds which end up in clear ‘wider’ positions that would benefit those standing to the sides of the box and a few in narrower positions, where they might stand a decent chance of getting there first.
Watching some of them, it seems mad that no-one bothers standing out wide. Take Southampton vs Leicester in 2023, and Danny Ward’s save from James Ward-Prowse. The ball bounces directly to where a Corinthians player would be running in towards goal. The player who does get there, Ricardo Pereira, has to turn 90 degrees to reach the ball.
Here’s another example, when West Ham’s Alphonse Areola saved from Everton striker Beto in 2024. The ball is pushed out into a good position for a player running in from wide, particularly as he could potentially square to Beto for a tap-in.
When Tottenham’s Son Heung-min had a penalty saved against Wolves in December 2024, teammate Archie Gray was first on the scene. But because he’d run from a head-on position, rather than breaking in from wide, he had to go away from goal. A wider starting position, and he could have delivered a dangerous ball into the six-yard box.
This one isn’t included in the nine that clearly bounce into wide positions, but when Liverpool’s Giorgi Mamardashvili saved an Erling Haaland penalty earlier this season, could a player positioned wide have reached the ball before Virgil van Dijk? Maybe. He’d surely have made the clearance a little more difficult.
Incidentally, from these 50 penalties, there was only one player who stood outside the width of the box, a la Corinthians — and he did it twice in the same game. Aston Villa’s Donyell Malen positioned himself there for two Marco Asensio penalties at Southampton. Both were saved — but neither of the rebounds came his way.
Anyway, let’s be slightly generous, for the sake of round numbers, and say that 10 of these 50 — 20 per cent — of saved penalties, or those that hit the woodwork, bounce into a wider position. But what percentage of penalties overall actually produce a rebound?
Well, a fairly small number. Taking into account the 784 Premier League penalties taken since the start of 2018-19, 84 per cent don’t end in a rebound because they’re either scored or miss the goal completely. Of the remaining 16 per cent, our sample size of 50 suggests that about 20 per cent of those penalties appear to bounce into a wider position. This means we’re talking about maybe 3.2 per cent of penalties where a player in the Corinthians position would benefit.
It’s not a huge amount. But in the era of marginal gains, why not?
Sadly, for the sake of this experiment, Corinthians players appear extremely reliable from the spot, and keep on scoring their penalties. Furthermore, their coach Lucas Piccinato was dismissed last week, and was replaced by former national team manager Emily Lima. Maybe we won’t see this approach anymore. But, given the above evidence, other teams — and indeed, individual players — might as well give it a go.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Premier League, Champions League, Soccer, International Football, Women's Soccer
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