Do footballers follow Nash equilibrium?

This paper deals with the question whether kickers and goalkeepers optimaly choose the direction of their shoots and saves in penalty kicks. It examines real data from play-off stage penalty shootouts of the football Champions League, World Cup and EURO which ocurred in years 2000-2011 and tests whether players play in line with the predictions of mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium model. Predictions of the Nash equilibrium are then compared to predictions of other alternative models of the game theory. Using these structure, the paper follows up on the research of Azar and Bar-Eli (2009) and extends this with new data collected in the circumstances of increased stress, higher quality and higher motivations of the players. Analysis yielded different results in comparison to the forementioned research, did not confirm the validity of the MSNE predictions, and thus indicates that those circumstances have significant impact on players' behavior in penalty kicks