Often people will tell you football is a simple game, there’s often luck involved, and that tactics & systems aren’t much. They’re wrong, football is complex, this is what makes it beautiful. And like any modern process, data plays a huge role in the sport as well. Tim Krul had studied the Costa Rican penalty kick takers after their previous shootout, he did his homework and this prompted Frans Hoek (the Dutch goalkeeping coach) to recommend Krul as the better option for the shootout. It worked. Krul jumped the right way for each pen, winning 100% of one half of the battle, the psychological one. The second half of it is down to his goalkeeping ability, which saw him save two out of five.
A user on reddit (/u/LewisGilbert97), posted this image on the subreddit, /r/mildly interesting that captures Tim Krul’s system for each kick and how he went about winning the shootout. Remarkable.
![Krul saves](https://0c0e8a.p3cdn1.secureserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Krul-saves.jpg)