Leitner Michael Christian, Richlan Fabio
Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria.
Department of Psychology, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria.
Front Sports Act Living. 2021 Aug 19;3:720488. doi: 10.3389/fspor.2021.720488. eCollection 2021.
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 of the course of the games. In contrast, bookings for other reasons (criticism and unfair sportsmanship) changed similarly for 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.
由于新冠疫情，欧洲顶级足球（即英式足球）联赛在2019/20赛季剩余比赛期间没有观众或观众人数受到严格限制（即“空场比赛”）。从运动心理学角度来看，这种情况为研究观众对裁判判罚的影响以及“主场优势”的相关效应提供了独特契机。研究分析了西班牙、英格兰、德国、意大利、俄罗斯、土耳其、奥地利和捷克共和国顶级联赛中总共1286场比赛的结果、犯规、黄牌警告及黄牌警告原因，并对2018/19赛季（正常观众人数）和2019/20赛季（空场比赛）各自比赛日的情况进行了对比。遵循近期主场优势效应研究中的方法发展，采用了四种不同的统计分析方法——包括波拉德的传统方法——来评估主场优势效应。有两个主要发现。首先，在空场比赛中，主场球队因犯规被出示黄牌的次数明显更多。最重要的是，这种效应在比赛过程中一直存在。相比之下，在空场比赛中，主场和客场球队因其他原因（批评和不公平体育行为）被出示黄牌的情况变化相似。其次，在2018/19赛季常规比赛中确定存在的各顶级联赛中的总体主场表现和主场优势效应，在2019/20赛季的空场比赛中消失了。我们得出结论，新冠疫情期间欧洲顶级足球赛事中缺乏观众导致看台上对裁判的社会压力减小，这也对主场优势产生了潜在影响。裁判对主场球队比赛的评估更加客观，导致主场球队因犯规被出示黄牌的次数增加。由于对客场球队的裁判判罚没有显著变化，我们认为我们的观察结果反映了裁判对主场球队无意识偏袒的减少。
