Do penalty shootout goals count? Goals, wins and records after a shootout

What the Laws say: the match is a draw

A match decided on penalties is a drawn match. Law 10.2 of the IFAB Laws of the Game sets the result in two sentences: "The team scoring the greater number of goals is the winner. If both teams score no goals or an equal number of goals, the match is drawn." When a competition needs a winner, the same Law permits the away goals rule, two periods of extra time of up to 15 minutes each, and penalties, alone or combined. Law 10.3 then places the shootout outside the match: "Penalties (penalty shoot-out) are taken after the match has ended" (IFAB, Law 10).

That one clause settles every statistical question on this page. Goals are scored in the match, and the shootout is not part of the match, so nothing scored in it is a goal in the match. The Law gives the shootout its own bookkeeping instead: "The referee keeps a record of the kicks." Older editions called the procedure "kicks from the penalty mark", and competition regulations still use that name.

When The Analyst asked IFAB in 2021, its technical director, David Elleray, said that "a match is drawn, won or lost according to the number of goals both teams score" in normal time and extra time. Opta, which supplies The Analyst's data, follows the same line: "a penalty shootout is a method to find a winner of a tie", not the winner of the match (The Analyst, 1 June 2021).

How to write a result decided on penalties

Write the match score, then the shootout in brackets. The 2022 World Cup final is the clearest worked example. Argentina and France were 2–2 after 90 minutes and 3–3 after extra time; Argentina won the shootout 4–2 (Sky Sports match report). In full, that is "Argentina 3–3 France (a.e.t.; Argentina won 4–2 on penalties)". The short forms are "3–3 (4–2 pens)" and "3–3 a.e.t., 4–2 on penalties", where a.e.t. means after extra time. FIFA's own ranking documents abbreviate a penalty shoot-out as PSO.

The shootout stopped after eight kicks because France, with one kick left, could reach only three, the early finish in Law 10.3 that the penalty shootout counter applies kick by kick. None of these eight kicks changes the match record. Three ways of writing the result are wrong:

• "Argentina 7–5 France" adds the shootout to the match score. No competition records it that way.
• "Argentina 4–2 France" gives the shootout score as if it were the result, and loses the six goals actually scored in the match.
• "Argentina beat France 3–3" is not wrong about who won the trophy, but in a team's record the match is a draw, so a results table should show D, with the shootout in a note.

Goal tallies and the Golden Boot

A shootout goal never enters a player's goal tally. The World Cup regulations award the Golden Boot "to the player who scores the most goals in the final competition", with ties broken by assists, as determined by FIFA's Technical Study Group, and then by fewer minutes played (FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Regulations, Article 45.11(b)). The article does not mention shootouts, because it does not need to: Article 13 calls the shootout kicks from the penalty mark "taken to determine the winner", and they are not goals in a match.

The 2022 final shows the rule at work. Mbappé finished the tournament on eight goals and won the Golden Boot; Messi finished on seven (SI.com). Both scored in the shootout, and neither total moved.

The table also clears up the commonest confusion on this topic. A penalty kick during the match is an ordinary goal, and a player's "penalty goals" in any statistics table are those in-match penalties. Mbappé's hat-trick in the final included two of them, and all three goals count. The Laws now call the shootout "penalties" too, where they used to say "kicks from the penalty mark", which is why the two are easy to mix up.

Goalkeepers: saves, goals conceded and clean sheets

A goalkeeper's record ends with the match. A clean sheet means no goals conceded in the match, and a shootout goal is not a goal in the match, so a goalkeeper whose team drew 0–0 after extra time keeps the clean sheet whether the shootout is won or lost. In the same way, the goals a goalkeeper concedes in a shootout are not added to the goals conceded across a season or a tournament.

Shootout saves are counted as a record of their own. Sporting Kansas City, for example, reported that Tim Melia saved all three kicks he faced in an MLS Cup Playoffs shootout against San Jose in November 2020, and that he was, per Opta, the first goalkeeper to shut out an opponent in a traditional playoff shootout (sportingkc.com). That "shut out" is a shootout statistic, kept apart from the match.

Awards for goalkeepers are judged rather than counted. The World Cup's Golden Glove goes "to the best goalkeeper in the final competition, as selected by the FIFA Technical Study Group" (Article 45.11(d)), so there is no formula for a shootout save to enter or leave out.

Win, draw or loss in a team's record

In a team's record of results, a shootout leaves the match a draw. That follows from Law 10.2, and it is how Opta counts it. What changes from one competition to the next is the reward: a competition may give something to the shootout winner on top of the draw, and the two biggest ranking systems in football disagree on how much.

FIFA's ranking counts a shootout as half a win. Its method says matches "decided in a PSO are treated as a draw for the losing team and as 'half a win' for the winning team": the result value W is 0.75 for the winner instead of 1.0, and 0.5 for the loser (FIFA, Revision of the FIFA / Coca-Cola World Ranking). In the knockout rounds of a final tournament a team does not lose ranking points, even after a defeat or a shootout win against a weaker team, so there a shootout cannot cost a team points.

UEFA's club coefficient ignores the shootout. "Match points are awarded based on the final scores ratified by UEFA. Penalty shoot-outs do not count." With two points for a win and one for a draw, a Champions League tie won on penalties earns the club the points of a draw for that match; any bonus for reaching a later round goes to the club that went through (UEFA, How men's club coefficients are calculated).

A league can add a point for the shootout. MLS NEXT Pro launched in 2022 with a shootout after every draw: "each team receives 1 point after a tie during the initial 90 minutes. The winner of the subsequent penalty shootout earns an additional point" (mlsnextpro.com). In the match that report covers, Colorado Rapids 2 against Sporting Kansas City II, the game ended 1–1; the shootout was worth a point, not a goal.

Two-legged ties: the aggregate never includes the shootout

In a two-legged tie the shootout follows the second leg when the aggregate is level, and it is recorded the same way. Take a tie lost 1–0 in the first leg and won 1–0 after extra time in the second, then won 4–3 on penalties: the record holds two results, a 1–0 defeat and a 1–0 win, an aggregate of 1–1, and a shootout won 4–3. FIFA's ranking spells out that a second leg like this one, won in extra time and still followed by a shootout, counts as a normal win and defeat, not as a shootout result. UEFA has not used away goals since 2021, so in its competitions the shootout is the only tiebreaker after extra time; the soccer score counter keeps the aggregate for both legs.

Ice hockey and other sports do it differently

In the NHL a shootout win does add a goal, but only one, and only to the team. NHL Rule 84.4 says that "regardless of the number of goals scored during the shootout", the final score "will give the winning team one more goal than its opponent, based on the score at the end of overtime". The losing goalkeeper "will not be charged with the extra goal against", and the player who scores the deciding shootout goal is not credited with a goal in his personal statistics (NHL Official Rules 2018-2019). In the standings, "a victory in a shootout counts as one goal for, while a shootout loss counts as one goal against", and the regulation-win and ROW tiebreakers leave shootout wins out (NHL tie-breaking procedure).

So "do shootout goals count?" has a different answer in the hockey sports, and a 3–2 NHL result can be a 2–2 game won in a shootout. The hockey score counter records the extra goal and the standings points by league, and the guide to NCAA field hockey overtime sets out the one-goal credit there. In football, nothing scored in a shootout is ever added to the score.

Where the ranking answers fall short

The pages that ranked for this question when we checked on 3 November 2026 were sports features from FourFourTwo, Goal, The Analyst and Sportskeeda, and FAQ pages. Of those we read, only The Analyst quoted the Laws, from the 2020-21 edition, and none set out what the rule means for a goalkeeper, a ranking or a coefficient, or put football beside the NHL's rule. Five shortcuts that give the wrong answer:

This page covers how a shootout is recorded under the IFAB Laws of the Game and the regulations named above; a league or tournament may set its own points for a shootout, and its regulations are the text to follow. It does not cover betting rules, which each bookmaker sets. Simple Online Counter is a free, browser-based set of counters, and its penalty shootout counter keeps the kicks of a shootout under Law 10.3 as a record separate from the match score; it is not an official match record.