Sent On to Miss?

The 119th-Minute Substitution

It's a move we see more, not less. In an analytics era chasing the highest-percentage option, managers increasingly send on a fresh, specialist taker in the dying minutes, purely for the shootout.

On 29 June 2026 the Netherlands did exactly that, then watched substitute Justin Kluivert hit the post and go out of the World Cup. England fans remember Euro 2020: Rashford and Sancho, on in the 119th minute, both missed.

There's something cruel about it. The player barely touches the game, then the whole tournament rests on his one kick.

So does the gamble work? I built a dataset of 840 shootout kicks from 88 men's international shootouts (World Cup, Euros, Copa América; 1990–2026) to find out.

How Often Does a Shootout Penalty Go In?

First, the yardstick. Across all 840 kicks, the overall conversion rate is 72.0% (95% CI 68.9%–75.0%).

Roughly three in four shootout penalties are scored. Missing is the exception, which is exactly why a missed sub stands out.

For scale: even Lionel Messi has converted about 78% of his career penalties (114 of 147, shootouts aside), not far above this baseline. The spot-kick humbles almost everyone.

It's the Specialist Taker Who Pays

It's not substitutes in general who falter. Across all subs, the gap (67.3% vs 72.8% for starters) is only borderline.

The effect sits with the specialist takers, sent on at 105'+ largely to take a kick. They convert just 57.1%, and the most extreme, on at 110'+, only 50.0%.

Since the hypothesis is directional, subs predicted to do worse, the one-sided test is the relevant one; the two-sided figure is shown too.

The Specialist Takers, One by One

The closest cases to the hypothesis: every taker sent on at 105'+, often with the shootout in mind. As a group they scored 20 of 35 (57.1%).

Yet these are, on the whole, good penalty takers. In open play, the 29 with a career record convert 88% (459/523) — several with flawless records (Sarabia, Sancho, Willian) still missed here. That gap, 88% in normal play versus 57.1% in the shootout, is the point.

Tip: click any column header to sort. Career pens = a player's open-play penalties (scored/taken) and conversion rate, mostly Transfermarkt/FootyStats as of ~2026 — hover for the source. These are career totals (not point-in-time before the kick) and exclude shootout penalties, which aren't tracked per player. Coverage is patchy for some (FBref was unreachable to cross-check; a few, like Bernardeschi, take penalties but have no clean figure), so read the numbers as indicative, not audited.

Baseline by Competition & Era

Conversion is remarkably stable across competitions and decades, so the substitute effect is not an artefact of one tournament or period.

Why This Isn't a Clean Experiment

A substitute is not a random starter. Part of the gap may reflect player quality, not just cold legs.

But it often cuts the other way. The late sub is frequently a designated specialist, sent on precisely because he is one of the squad's best takers, with a strong record in open play.

That even these specialists miss more often suggests the conditions (a long wait, then one cold, decisive kick) matter more than the player. Either way this is observational data: the pattern is real, but it does not prove the substitution itself is the cause.