Introduction: The visual search strategies employed by soccer players when executing the penalty kick has received widespread research interest. To date, there is no research investigating the differences between visual search strategies in consecutive penalties which are scored and saved by the same soccer player. This was the focus of the present study. Methods: 30 amateur soccer players were recruited and took 2 placement penalty kicks, indoors, according to The Football Association (F.A.) guidelines for indoor football. The placement penalty required players to kick the football accurately to a corner of the goal. Eye movements of the penalty taker were recorded using SMI Eye tracking glasses. End location of the football was also recorded. Only those players who both scored and had their penalty saved by the goalkeeper (either order) were retained for analysis; 12 players met this criteria. Results: Saved penalties were kicked significantly more centrally in the goal (p < .001). This was a result of increased length of time (p = .002) and frequency (p = .011) spent fixating to the goalkeeper in the approach phase prior to taking the penalty. This subsequently resulted in reduced fixation time on the ball (p < .001). In the final steps of the approach, immediately prior to kicking the ball, players who had their penalty saved increased length of time spent fixating on the area immediately ahead of the ball (p = .005) and initially fixated to this area earlier in the approach (p = .025). The earlier fixation on the area immediately ahead of the ball in the saved penalty resulted in players having reduced quiet eye [QE] period (p = .03) which ended earlier prior to kicking the ball (p = .008). Discussion/conclusion: The current study found that saved penalties were the result of the penalty taker kicking the ball more centrally in the goal i.e. closer to the goalkeeper. This effect may be attributed to the distracting effect of the goalkeeper (despite standardising goalkeeper instructions; Wood and Wilson, 2010). During the saved penalty, in the final approach to the ball, players disengaged (fixated away) from the ball earlier prior to kicking the ball. Shorter QE periods, which also end earlier prior to the end of the action have been identified as a cause of task failure. Fixating away from the ball and making a predictive saccade in anticipation of tracking the ball after being kicked (c.f. Mann et al., 2013) may have impacted the quality of foot-ball contact, subsequently affecting kicking accuracy.
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