Standing tall brings penalty

As the managers of national football teams begin to choose 1 their players for the season, most of them won’t be listening to the ideas of social psycholo­gists. Perhaps they 2 should.

Research 3 has shown that football referees are more likely to penalise taller players when they tackle smaller oppo­nents. This is bad news 4 for England striker Peter Crouch who at 2m in height could be 5 the tallest footballer nowadays.

A study of more than 100,000 fouls in domestic, Euro­pean and international football showed 6 some interesting results. The 7 bigger the height difference between the two players is the more chance the referee will decide in favour 8 of the shorter one.

Academics from Rotterdam school of management in the Netherlands 9 also tested their ideas by asking football fans 10 to look at images of two players running towards a ball.

When asked 11 which of the footballers would end up on the ground more people thought 12 that the smaller player would be the victim and the 13 taller one the aggressor.

"You will 14 always get moments in a game when the situ­ation isn’t very clear and the referee 15 has to make a fast decision. This is where assumptions 16 could influence them," said Steffen Giessner, one of the authors of the report. "There is 17 an effect with height, but we can’t say how strong it is."

The researchers thought that their results might 18 be due to taller footballers often playing in defence, 19 where fouls might be more common. But a closer look at their data revealed that the largest number of fouls 20 were done by smaller midfield footballers against other players in the same position.