À atenção de quem de direito: Football referees do favour home teams, study shows: Academics have proved what Premiership football managers have been complaining about for years ? that referees are inconsistent and favour home teams. Analysing over 2,500 English Premiership matches, researchers discovered that referees were statistically more likely to award yellow and red cards against the away team ? even when home advantage, game importance and crowd size were taken into account. [...]
As well as finding a distinct home bias in refereeing disciplinary action and inconsistency between referees, the research also highlighted that:
- underdogs tend to incur a higher rate of disciplinary sanction than favourites
- the number of disciplinary offences tends to be higher in matches between evenly-balanced teams, in matches with end-of-season outcomes at stake and in matches with higher attendances
- home teams appear to play more aggressively in front of larger crowds
- the crowd size did not appear to influence the incidence of disciplinary sanction against the away team
- there was no evidence that the behaviour of either teams or referees is any different when the match is televised.
