Technology to aid English footballers to improve their penalty-taking ability

File photo of another England loss due to penalties in a major Cup tournament.

A technology is being developed by UK sports in association with BAE systems to assist a number of Olympians and Paralympians. According to experts, this will be a possible solution for England’s penalty shootout dilemma in major tournaments.

The virtual reality simulators will be able to replicate the atmosphere of live stadiums and give the players a real life scenario of the penalty shootout.

“Think of taking a penalty kick in a World Cup, that stressful environment. If you can replicate that so you can take a penalty kick better through simulation, you may be better prepared. People always say you can practice penalty kicks, but you cannot practice going into the environment where there are 100,000 people and you’ve got to score. You can create these learning experiences,” said Dr Scott Drawer, who leads the research and innovation team of UK sports.

BAE systems has provided services of 18,000 engineers to UK sports to make the project a reality and to boost the nation’s chance of winning medals at future Olympics.