Today Online: Portuguese researchers create database of behaviour of penalty takers to sell to clubs. “One of the oldest cliches in football is the one about penalties being a lottery. For many people, however, taking penalties is a science, as evidenced by a growing number of studies and books on the subject by academics and psychologists. One of the most recent is from a group of Portuguese researchers who have studied thousands of penalties, including those taken by Ronaldo, and built up a database describing the behaviour of individual players while taking a spot-kick.”