See the same question posted by me on Quora.
I was surprised to read the following statistics regarding the success rate of national teams in football penalty shootouts:
NATION PENALTY SHOOTOUT WIN/LOSS RECORD
Argentina 73%
Germany 71%
Brazil 64%
France 50%
Sweden 50%
Uruguay 50%
Italy 33%
Netherlands 20%
England 17%
The data was taken from the following competitions:
- the World Cup
- the European Championship (known as the European Nations Cup until 1976)
- the African Cup of Nations
- the Copa América
- the Asian Nations Cup
- African Games
- Afro–Asian Cup of Nations
- Asian Games
- Confederation of Southern African Football Associations Cup (COSAFA)
- Cecafa Senior Challenge Cup (CECAFA; also known as Al Amoudi Senior Challenge Cup)
- Confederación Centroamericana y del Caribe de Fútbol (CCCF and CONCACAF) tournaments
- FIFA/Confederations Cup
- Gold Cup
- Intercontinental Championship
- Olympic Games
- Panamerican Games
- South Asian Gold Cup
- South Asian Football Federation Cup
- South East Asian Games
- Tiger Cup
- West Asian Games
- West Asian Championship.
Is there any reason that explains such a discrepancy between teams? I would have expected the distribution to be much more uniform, as I felt that professional players would be trained pretty much the same around the world when it comes to kicking penalties.