A quarter of American men make the same delusional claim about World Cup penalty kicks: survey

The World Cup on US soil apparently has American men thinking rather highly of their soccer abilities — with nearly a quarter of them saying they were confident they could “definitely or probably” score on a penalty kick in a World Cup match.The YouGov poll quizzed American men and women across several age cohorts — and even political affiliations — and the findings were interesting.Overall, approximately one in five (19%) of US adults believed they could score on a penalty kick, where the ball is positioned 12 yards from the goal line — with 15% of women and 24% of men saying they could pull it off.Those answering in the affirmative were most densely concentrated among those in the 18-29 age bracket, where a whopping 41% of men said they would score if given the chance.Meanwhile, around a quarter (23%) of women in that age group said the same.Among respondents aged 30-44, 32% of men and 19% of women expressed confidence in their ability to sneak a penalty shot past the goalie.The numbers trail off significantly from there, with just 18% of men and 10% of women in the 45-64 cohort making the audacious claim — and bottoming out in the 65-and-over bracket, where just 11% of men and 6% of women believe they could score.Professional-level athletes typically convert 71-79% of penalties, according to a study published in the British science journal Nature.When it comes to the YouGov survey, major differences came to the fore when the research company put the same question to people by political affiliation — with 58% of Republican men under 45 believing they could score on a penalty kick compared to just 28% of Democratic men and 26% of Independent men of the same age.The inflated sense of soccer skills among Republicans carried over to women, with 34% of GOP women under 45 asserting they could do the deed compared to 21% of young Democratic women and just 14% of Independents.YouGov points out that there were no statistically significant differences within...