Top Penalty Killers

Kick wrote:Gotta say, I am a bit disappointed by Courtois' stats there. He'll improve over time I imagine but 2/13 is not very good.

Well, originally I only wanted to list players who faced at least 20 penalties in competitive matches, but I thought before people start asking "Where is XY?", I added some better known players with less pens in the beginning of the list, too.

By now most of these added to their stats, so Thibaut Courtois will certainly follow suit, too. Moreover, just imagine he'd save the next pen, then he'd have saved 3 of 14, which immediately would look much better again.

By the way, keepers who surprised me with their stats were for example Edwin van der Sar, Hugo Lloris, Maarten Stekelenburg and Mark Schwarzer.

Sirigu is another shocking one.

Edwin Van der Sar was a surprise, too. (I wanted to add him to the post before, but I was already ninja'd )

Yeah. I could have sworn VDS was better than that.

Well, as the list does not contain saves from penalty shoot-outs, this might have swayed the number in some keepers' favour still.

certainly true.


And the amount of times they have faced a certain Chelsea legend.

Wow, Van Der Sar is pretty bad at penalties.

You wouldnt have though it, if you watched the 2007 Community Shield.

Every time Liverpool plays and concede a penalty, you always hear commentators say "Reina - A Master in saving penalties". Why?

7 saves is decent but letting in 43 is not.

commentators are idiots too.

AltoZ wrote:Every time Liverpool plays and concede a penalty, you always hear commentators say "Reina - A Master in saving penalties". Why?

Because especially English commentators aren't the brightest of the bunch?

I was lazy and didn't update this overview for a while. In the meantime, transfermarkt.de added the saves pens from penalty shoot-outs to the data, so there are some bigger changes to the former table.

Top Penalty Killers as of 2013/09/07:

Diego Alves - 50.00% saved penalties (12/24) - FC Valencia, Brazil
Kenneth Vermeer - 42.86% (9/21) - Ajax Amsterdam, Netherlands

Júlio César - 37.04% (20/57) - Queens Park Rangers, Brazil
David de Gea - 35.00% (7/20) - Manchester United, Spain U21
Miguel Pinto - 35.00% (7/20) - Atlas Guadalajara, Chile
Samir Handanovic - 34.21% (26/76) - Inter Milan, Slovenia
Jens Lehmann - 34.00% (34/100) - retired (Dortmund, Schalke, Arsenal, Germany)
Oka Nikolov - 33.33% (20/60) - Philadelphia Union
Kevin Trapp - 33.33% (5/15) - Eintracht Frankfurt,  Germany U21
Simon Jentzsch - 32.22% (29/90) - retired (KSC, 1860, Wolfsburg, Augsburg)
Hans Jörg Butt - 32.26% (20/62) - retired (HSV, Leverkusen, Bayern München, Germany)
Wojciech Szczesny - 32.26% (10/31) - FC Arsenal, Poland
Manuel Neuer - 32.14% (18/56) - Bayern München, Germany
Tim Wiese - 31.91% (15/47) - TSG 1899 Hoffenheim, Germany*
Roman Bürki - 31.25% (10/32) - Grasshopper Club Zürich, Switzerland U21
Yann Sommer - 30.43% (14/46) - FC Basel, Switzerland <3

Joe Hart - 28.57% (12/42) - Manchester City, England
Christofer Heimeroth - 28.57% (10/35) - Borussia Mönchengladbach, Germany*
Michel Vorm - 28.57% (10/35) - Swansea City, Netherlands
Diego Benaglio - 28.00% (14/50) - VfL Wolfsburg, Switzerland
Emiliano Viviano - 28.00% (14/50) - FC Arsenal, Italy
Ali Al Habsi - 27.78% (10/36) - Wigan Athletic, Oman
Gigi Buffon - 27.72% (28/101) - Juventus Turin, Italy
Jean-François Gillet - 27.27% (21/77) - FC Torino, Belgium
Christian Abbiati - 26.67% (12/45) - AC Milan, Italy*
Bernd Leno - 25.93% (7/27) - Bayer Leverkusen, Germany U21
Tom Starke - 25.76% (17/66) - FC Bayern München, Germany*
Diego López - 25.71% (9/35) - Real Madrid, Spain*
Fernando Muslera - 25.58% (11/43) - Galatasaray Istanbul, Uruguay
Iker Casillas - 25.25% (25/99) - Real Madrid, Spain
Rui Patrício - 25.00% (10/40) - Sporting Lissabon, Portugal
Fraser Forster - 25.00% (4/16) - Celtic Glasgow, England
Thibaut Courtois - 25.00% (3/12) - Atlético Madrid, Belgium
Oliver Kahn - 24.46% (34/139) - retired (KSC, Bayern München, Germany)
Pepe Reina - 24.19% (15/62) - SSC Napoli, Spain
Simon Mignolet - 23.81% (5/21) - FC Liverpool, Belgium
Marc-André ter Stegen - 23.68% (9/38) - Borussia Mönchengladbach, Germany
Petr Čech - 23.26% (20/86) - Chelsea FC, Czech Republic
Ralf Fährmann - 23.08% (6/26) - Schalke 04, Germany*
Jhonny Herrera - 23.08% (6/26) - Club Universidad de Chile, Chile*
Willy Caballero - 23.08% (3/13) - FC Málaga, Argentina*
Timo Horn - 22.73% (5/22) - 1.FC Köln, Germany U21
Edwin Van der Sar - 22.34% (21/94) - retired (Manchester United, Netherlands)
René Adler - 22.22% (8/36) - HSV, Germany
Ron-Robert Zieler - 22.22% (4/18) - Hannover 96, Germany
Marco Wölfli - 21.21% (14/66) - BSC Young Boys, Switzerland
Timo Hildebrand - 20.83% (10/48) - Schalke 04, Germany*
Thomas Kraft - 20.69% (6/29) - Hertha BSC, Germany*
Sergio Romero - 20.59% (7/34) - AS Monaco, Argentina
Oliver Baumann - 20.00% (5/25) - SC Freiburg, Germany U21

Francesco Toldo - 18.18% (12/66) - retired (Inter Milan, Italy)
Ben Foster - 18.18% (8/44) - West Bromwich Albion, England
Víctor Valdés - 18.00% (9/50) - FC Barcelona, Spain
Roman Weidenfeller - 17.78% (8/45) - Borussia Dortmund, Germany*
Mark Schwarzer - 17.72% (14/79) - FC Chelsea, Australia
Brad Friedel - 16.13% (10/62) - Tottenham Hotspur, USA*
Mattia Perin - 16.00% (4/25) - FC Genua 1893, Italy
Maarten Stekelenburg - 14.58% (7/48) - FC Fulham, Netherlands
Fabian Giefer - 14.29% (2/14) - Fortuna Düsseldorf, Germany U21
Hugo Lloris - 13.33% (6/45) - Tottenham Hotspur, France
José Manuel Pinto - 13.04% (3/23) - FC Barcelona, Spain*

Lars Unnerstall - 8.33% (1/12) - Schalke 04, Germany*
Asmir Begović - 8.00% (2/25) - Stoke City, Bosnia+Herzegovina
Salvatore Sirigu - 7.41% (2/27) - PSG, Italy
Tim Krul - 6.90% (2/29) - Newcastle United, Netherlands
Sven Ulreich - 6.67% (2/30) - VfB Stuttgart, Germany*
Sebastian Mielitz - 6.25% (1/16) - Werder Bremen, Germany*

bold: current Nr.1 of his NT
italics: retired players
*) currently not a member of the NT squad

Data from transfermarkt.de - current as of 2013/09/07

If I have a little too much time in the future, I might put the data into a LibreOffice Calc table where I should be able to keep the stats a bit better ^^

Ha. Gotcha. Here's the Top Penalty Killer list in new and revised version:



red - Nr.1 of the respective NTs (if I made a mistake there, just scream so that I can fix it for the next issue)
blue - retired GKs
black - the rest

The fields B/C/D are percentages, H-M absolute values

Is that accurate for Rogerio Ceni?

Maybe he should stick with taking penalties instead of defending them.

Also, do you know (or is easy to calculate) the save percentage for penalties in open play as opposed to shoot outs?

elitedam wrote:Is that accurate for Rogerio Ceni?

Maybe he should stick with taking penalties instead of defending them.

Well, transfermarkt.de says so. But that was my thought, too - maybe he decided shooting penalties to offset his inability in saving them XD

elitedam wrote:Also, do you know (or is easy to calculate) the save percentage for penalties in open play as opposed to shoot outs?

Well, the save percentage of penalties in open play in the above table is given in field C, and the formula is pretty easy in LibreOffice Calc: C=RUNDEN(((J/K)*100);2)

Is Mignolet not the number 1 keeper for Belgium?

Motogp69 wrote:Is Mignolet not the number 1 keeper for Belgium?

Simon Mignolet's (12 caps) last international match was in May 2013, while Thibaut Courtois' (12 caps) last international match was the current qualifier 2013. Jean-François Gillet (9 caps) last played in February 2013 for Belgium. As I don't watch Belgium too often, I just wasn't sure whom to pick of them - so maybe some Belgian fan could fill me in who is considered the Nr.1? Is it Thibaut Courtois by now?

rwo power wrote:

elitedam wrote:Is that accurate for Rogerio Ceni?

Maybe he should stick with taking penalties instead of defending them.

Well, transfermarkt.de says so. But that was my thought, too - maybe he decided shooting penalties to offset his inability in saving them XD

elitedam wrote:Also, do you know (or is easy to calculate) the save percentage for penalties in open play as opposed to shoot outs?

Well, the save percentage of penalties in open play in the above table is given in field C, and the formula is pretty easy in LibreOffice Calc: C=RUNDEN(((J/K)*100);2)

Thanks, but I mean the overall save percentage from all the goalkeepers combined. I was just wondering if it was "easier" for a GK to save a shoot out penalty than it would be to save a penalty from open play since many players taking penalties in the shoot outs have less experience in that situation.

elitedam wrote:Thanks, but I mean the overall save percentage from all the goalkeepers combined. I was just wondering if it was "easier" for a GK to save a shoot out penalty than it would be to save a penalty from open play since many players taking penalties in the shoot outs have less experience in that situation.

I'm sorry, there is no overall data available. But if you look at the numbers, you will see that it depends on the GKs - some are better at saving pens from open play and some are better saving pens from shoot-outs. BTW, there are even several GKs in the list who have never had to face a PSO so far.

Edit: I just used some LibreOffice Calc magic and calculated the numbers for the GKs I have in my list. The overall save percentage is 24.27%. Save percentage from open play 23.35% (with 2475 pens taken vs 68 GKs) and the save percentage from PSOs is 27.99% (with 611 pens taken vs 48 GKs). I don't think you can actually draw conclusions from that as it is just a subset of keepers that actually face PSOs.

That's exactly what I was wondering.

Muchos thank yous.   

Top Penalty Killers - 2013/10/27:


red - Nr.1 of the respective NTs (if I made a mistake there, just scream so that I can fix it for the next issue)
blue - retired GKs
black - the rest

The fields B/C/D are percentages, H-M absolute values

lol Handanovic always saved them when he was in Udinese.... But when he moved to Inter he has not saved a single one ... 0 ! ... and so his average has dropped ...

I was sure   to see so high Julio Cesar, he has improved a lot over the years in this and in the last period are most the saved penalties that not ... Safety

So, I found some time to update this list.

Top Penalty Killers - 2014/02/23:

4 in the top 10
7 in the top 20

German goalkeepers.  

Fuchsteufelswild wrote:4 in the top 10
7 in the top 20

German goalkeepers.  

Actually you can't count it that way. I have more BL keepers in the list than keepers from other leagues, so the numbers are a bit skewed in that respect.

Diego ALves saved another PK today in europa league, really a monster at those