It’s been remarked by football commentators that Peter Crouch seems to be penalised a lot, especially by Continental referees. It seems that he may not be alone, because there would indeed appear to be a bias against tall footballers.
Quaquebake and Giessner (2010) analysed more than 100,000 fouls from the UEFA Champions League, German Bundesliga and FIFA World Cups. They found that taller people were more often held accountable for fouls than shorter ones – even when no fouls were committed.
It’s not clear why this should be, but it seems that in close decisions, the player’s height is used as an additional piece of information by the referee. It could be that very tall players are seen as a bit uncoordinated, or as overly aggressive. Either way, it seems to be another of those assumptions that are made about people which, even if they may have a grain of truth in them, can also be grossly unfair to the individual concerned.
Much more on referee bias later.
David Donner
No comments:
Post a Comment