Does Player Age Affect the Home Advantage? Coaches’ Perceptions and Data from Professional Football

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niels van de Ven
Keyword(s):  
Professional Experience ◽  
Professional Football ◽  
Home Advantage ◽  
Soccer Teams

We hypothesized that football (soccer) teams with older players perform better in away games. This hypothesis is based on research on the home advantage that shows that feeling more familiar with the playing venue and having a familiar pregame routine are important causes of the home advantage. Older players are relatively more familiar with the location in away games and we therefore predict teams with older players to perform better in those games. We find that coaches (with professional experience) indeed think that older players perform relatively better in away games. Data from the Dutch professional league (N = 3060) confirmed that there was a very small effect: teams with an average higher age performed better in away games (controlling for team quality). Although we do seem to confirm the predicted effect that teams that are on average older do better in away games, this effect is very small.

scholarly journals How does spectator presence affect football? Home advantage remains in European top-class football matches played without spectators during the COVID-19 pandemic

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. e0248590
Author(s):  
Fabian Wunderlich ◽  
Matthias Weigelt ◽  
Robert Rein ◽  
Daniel Memmert
Keyword(s):  
Driving Factor ◽  
Professional Football ◽  
Home Advantage ◽  
European Football

The present paper investigates factors contributing to the home advantage, by using the exceptional opportunity to study professional football matches played in the absence of spectators due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. More than 40,000 matches before and during the pandemic, including more than 1,000 professional matches without spectators across the main European football leagues, have been analyzed. Results support the notion of a crowd-induced referee bias as the increased sanctioning of away teams disappears in the absence of spectators with regard to fouls (p < .001), yellow cards (p < .001), and red cards (p < .05). Moreover, the match dominance of home teams decreases significantly as indicated by shots (p < .001) and shots on target (p < .01). In terms of the home advantage itself, surprisingly, only a non-significant decrease is found. While the present paper supports prior research with regard to a crowd-induced referee bias, spectators thus do not seem to be the main driving factor of the home advantage. Results from amateur football, being naturally played in absence of a crowd, provide further evidence that the home advantage is predominantly caused by factors not directly or indirectly attributable to a noteworthy number of spectators.

An Analysis of Home Advantage in the Top Two Spanish Professional Football Leagues

2009 ◽  
Vol 108 (3) ◽  
pp. 789-797 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pedro A. Sánchez ◽  
Tomás García-Calvo ◽  
Francisco M. Leo ◽  
Richard Pollard ◽  
Miguel A. Gómez
Keyword(s):  
Professional Football ◽  
Home Advantage

scholarly journals Decompositions by sources and by subpopulations of the Pietra index: two applications to professional football teams in Italy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Porro ◽  
Mariangela Zenga
Keyword(s):  
Professional Football ◽  
Remarkable Feature ◽  
Soccer Teams ◽  
Decomposition By Subpopulations ◽  
Special Case ◽  
Pietra Index

AbstractIn this paper two innovative procedures for the decomposition of the Pietra index are proposed. The first one allows the decomposition by sources, while the second one provides the decomposition by subpopulations. As special case of the latter procedure, the “classical” decomposition in two components (within and between) can be easily obtained. A remarkable feature of both the proposed procedures is that they permit the assessment of the contribution to the Pietra index at the smallest possible level: each source for the first one and each subpopulation for the second one. To highlight the usefulness of these procedures, two applications are provided regarding Italian professional football (soccer) teams.

scholarly journals No Fans–No Pressure: Referees in Professional Football During the COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Christian Leitner ◽  
Fabio Richlan
Keyword(s):  
Czech Republic ◽  
Traditional Method ◽  
Social Pressure ◽  
Statistical Analyses ◽  
Professional Football ◽  
Psychological Perspective ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
Home Advantage ◽  
European Football ◽  
Potential Impact

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, European elite football (a.k.a. soccer) leagues played the remaining season 2019/20 without or strongly limited attendance of supporters (i.e., “ghost games”). From a sport psychological perspective this situation poses a unique opportunity to investigate the crowd's influence on referee decisions and the associated effect of “home advantage.” A total of 1286 matches–played in the top leagues of Spain, England, Germany, Italy, Russia, Turkey, Austria and the Czech Republic–were analyzed for results, fouls, bookings and reasons for bookings and contrasted between respective matchdays of season 2018/19 (regular attendance) and season 2019/20 (ghost games). Following recent methodological developments in the research on the home advantage effect, four different statistical analyses–including Pollard's traditional method–were used for the assessment of the home advantage effect. There are two main findings. First, home teams were booked significantly more often with yellow cards for committing fouls in ghost games. Most importantly, this effect was independent of the course of the games. In contrast, bookings for other reasons (criticism and unfair sportsmanship) changed similarly for both home and away teams in ghost games. Second, the overall home performance and home advantage effect in the respective elite leagues–identified in the respective matches of the regular 2018/19 season–vanished in the ghost games of the 2019/20 season. We conclude that the lack of supporters in top European football during the COVID-19 pandemic led to decreased social pressure from the ranks on referees, which also had a potential impact on the home advantage. Referees assessed the play of home teams more objectively, leading to increased yellow cards awarded for fouls committed by the home teams. Since there were no significant changes in referee decisions against the away teams, we argue that our observations reflect a reduction of unconscious favoritism of referees for the home teams.

scholarly journals An ecological dynamics rationale to explain home advantage in professional football

2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (09) ◽  
pp. 1650102 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Gama ◽  
Gonçalo Dias ◽  
Micael Couceiro ◽  
Pedro Passos ◽  
Keith Davids ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Complex Adaptive System ◽  
Team Sports ◽  
Professional Football ◽  
Ecological Dynamics ◽  
Theoretical Rationale ◽  
Home Advantage ◽  
Complex Adaptive ◽  
Team Activity ◽  
Text Version ◽  
Number Of Passes

Despite clear findings, research on home advantage in team sports lacks a comprehensive theoretical rationale for understanding why this phenomenon is so compelling. The aim of this study was to provide an explanatory theoretical rationale in ecological dynamics for the influence of home advantage observed in research on professional football. We recorded 30 competitive matches and analyzed 13958 passes, from one highly successful team in the Portuguese Premier League, during season 2010/2011. Performance data were analyzed using the Match Analysis Software—Amisco[Formula: see text] (version 3.3.7.25), allowing us to characterize team activity profiles. Results were interpreted from an ecological dynamics perspective, explaining how task and environmental constraints of a competitive football setting required performers to continuously co-adapt to teammate behaviors. Despite slight differences in percentage of ball possession when playing home or away, the number of passes achieved by the team, while in possession of the ball, was quite different between home or away venues. When playing at home, the number of passes performed by the team was considerably higher than when playing away. The explanation proposed in this study for a home advantage effect can be understood from studying interpersonal coordination tendencies of team sports players as agents in a complex adaptive system.

Does Crowd Support Drive the Home Advantage in Professional Football? Evidence from German Ghost Games during the COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
pp. 152700252110265
Author(s):  
Kai Fischer ◽  
Justus Haucap
Keyword(s):  
Regression Analysis ◽  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Natural Experiment ◽  
Professional Football ◽  
Occupancy Rate ◽  
Home Advantage ◽  
Occupancy Rates

This paper examines the relation between crowd support and home advantage in men’s professional football in making use of a unique “natural experiment” induced by restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic: the so-called ghost games in the top three German football divisions at the end of the 2019/2020 season. We find that there is a reduced home advantage in the first division, whereas no change is observed in the second and third divisions. Our regression analysis indicates that the decrease in the home advantage and the heterogeneity across divisions are not sensitive to a variety of performance, location, and team covariates and are best explained through the lower occupancy rate in the stadia. Hence, the decrease in occupancy to zero at the ghost games has been less dramatic for teams that have been used to low occupancy rates. We cannot find strong evidence for a change in referee behavior or teams’ tactics as main impact channels of occupancy rates on the home advantage. Hence, we argue that psychological reasons are of higher importance.

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