How much control in penalty shootouts? Or just based on player feats vs GK?

Just played a World Cup 2014 session offline, and had an interesting penalty shootout with Holland (me) vs. England that ended in 18-17 win for me. Therefore I was wondering how much control is there actually in the penalty shootouts? Or is it just based on players feats like Finishing , the star rating and the goalkeepers (GK) star rating? And will it then just be a bit of a lottery, with a slight advantage for teams who have the above feats?

Thanks, and heading in the rebound from a penalty during the match looks good .

From my experience with penalties in SWOS, I rarely, rarely beat the CPU, regardless of team strengths. Although I do like to think that I normally beat weaker teams in normal time, therefore avoiding the need for penalties, and that s the reason I lose against the CPU, as normally it is a strong team.

But going to penalties to me is akin to losing the game. Am I missing something? I do score most penalties, it s just the CPU rarely misses, or my goalie never saves.