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The effect of enlarged pressure on penalty

performance of football players at the end of the

season.

Student: Lex Verhoeve – 10802711

Supervisor: Drs. R. van Hemert

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Statement of Originality

This document is written by Lex Verhoeve who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document.

I declare that the text and the work presented in this document are original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in creating it.

The faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.

Contents

Abstract 3 1. Introduction 3 2. Theoretic Framework 4 3. Methodology 14 4. Results 17

5. Conclusion and discussion 23

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Abstract

This archival data research investigated the relationship between stress and the accuracy of penalties. Looking at the end of the season when the stress is high and the stakes are big, do football clubs perform worse at penalties in comparison with clubs who have nothing to win or to lose? This will be researched by multiple logistic regressions using penalties from 10 seasons from the Bundesliga, Eredivisie, La Liga, premier league and the Italian Serie A. Using multiple variables, minutes, age, stance and the home advantage. The latter which is according to the current theories a major effect in sports and therefore it is also looked into, to see if the home advantage has a moderating effect on the perceived stress and performance. Since players could be extra stressed around degradation in front of their own public or not reaching the championship in front of their own crowd. Or perhaps play even better for their own crowd because they reach a higher level through the support of the fans.

1. Introduction

An important and exiting football match where after a violation a penalty is given. Fans cheering loudly and watch the professional football players leading them to their long-awaited victory to win the competition or to get out of the degradation zone. This one penalty has a huge influence in whether Team A or Team B wins the football match. Team A has huge interests in winning this match. When they lose they have to move to a lower competition, losing sponsorship money and gaining less revenue. They have to score this penalty. The pressure is gigantic, everything depends on this single moment. Clubs have huge stakes with staying in the competition or winning it, because they could get more revenues from fans and get more sponsorships or lose fans and sponsor contracts due to the fact that they would have to play a lower tier competition the next season (voetbalprimeur, 2018). This could lead to a huge weight on the shoulders of players, who might be more stressed when taking a penalty. Becoming champion generally means that a club would earn a higher revenue and a champions league ticket, a degradation means that they lose money from loss of television money and loss of revenue.

A penalty kick is a free kick on goal given by the referee when the opposing team makes an error in the area around the goal ruining the other team their chance to score a goal. It is taken from the penalty spot 11 meters from the goal. The other players are not allowed to interfere and only the keeper may stand in the goal and one person is allowed to shoot (KNVB, 2016).

There has been research around penalties in football. This with the reason that penalties are mostly regarded as a free goal but it still gets missed a lot. How does this happen? Is it the fact that the team is playing at their own stadium, is the other team’s goalkeeper that much

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better, is the striker just unlucky, is the sun shining in his eyes or is the penalty taker breaking under the pressure that is on his shoulders, due to the fact that they will degrade when he doesn’t score the penalty? Or is it the other way around will a team win the championship when the shooter scores the penalty? Baumeister (1984) researched the how people choke under pressure and the influence of stress on the choking. This could be the case for football players who could choke under pressure while taking penalties. Dohmen (2008) looked at the size of the crowd, home advantage and the time of the penalty to look at why penalties are missed. Jordet (2008) looked at more psychological reasons on why penalties are missed. There has also been research on football and sports in general which could also be applied on penalties. The current state of the theories around sports and penalties will be further explained in the theoretical framework.

The papers above have looked towards different reasons on why things happen in sports and why penalties are missed but I also think there is a different reason for why this happens. When there are high stakes the players could choke under pressure and the club could lose a lot of money. But these different stakes could have different effects on the stress perceived by the players. Therefore, looking at the difference between penalty performance of the top teams and lower teams with high stakes in comparison with the penalties with no stakes. It is interesting to know if there is a difference in performance when there are profits at stake, losses at stake or nothing at stake and what that difference might be. I will also take a look at the moderating effect of the home advantage to see if teams playing for the championship or degradation play worse or better at home.

I will research this at the hand of archival data, by looking at the last shot penalties in five different countries from the last nine seasons. The data used will contain N=4338 penalties from the German, Dutch, Spanish, Italian and English competition. Then I will use differe nt statistical calculations. In the methodology I will describe this process more precise.

At the end this paper will finish with the results, conclusion and discussion. Where I will draw conclusions from the calculations and discuss these outcomes for future research.

2. Theoretic framework

In the current literature there are lot of papers on penalty kicks and sports itself. In this theoretic framework I will discuss the major and most important topics and theories which also apply to penalty kicks.

Stress has an influence on the performance, this was investigated by Baumeister (1984). In his paper he investigates if performance gets worse when the pressure is enlarged the conscious attention gets bigger as a result of the pressure getting higher. He measured it as

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consciousness and researched how people perform when they are told to remember what they are doing with their left hand while performing the task in comparison with the control group . By raising the pressure, he wants to see if people choke on the pressure and perform worse. He states that by raising the awareness and attention on a specific task disrupts the performance. He called this relationship, self-consciousness. He researched it at the hand of 6 experiments. In the first three, he researched the self-consciousness and the last 3 he raised the pressure and measured the performance. Baumeister came to the conclusion that when awareness arises on a normally well performed task, the performance declines and that pressure on performing well also worsens the performance. The last three experiments did not directly prove that raising the pressure causes increased attention to the internal processes, although he found a relations hip between pressure and self-consciousness. Beilock and Carr (2001) went further than Baumeister (1984) with the experiments, they looked at reasons why people choke under pressure while executing well-learned skills. They state that there are two different reasons for choking under pressure, distraction theories, where performers are distracted by the environment and that the environmental pressure cause performers to shift to attentional focus and that causes less performance. Another reason are self-focus theories, pressure raises the self-consciousness and anxiety and makes performers look after their own actions more and raises their step-by-step control and this causes lesser performance. Beilock and Carr researched this at the hand of four different experiments where they let students perform different tasks. With every experiment they created two or three groups where they tested performance under three or two different circumstances, by raising self-consciousness and distraction and then they looked how that influenced performance. At the first 2 experiments they measured the declarative accessibility of the knowledge representation while performing under differe nt circumstances and at different expert levels. The last 2 experiments where to measure choking under pressure, with different tasks at different skill levels. They found that with complex well-trained task may slow down and worsen with heighten pressure and distraction. With simpler less automated tasks this effect was far less. They also found a difference between motor tasks and mental task whereas motor task choked quicker when people had not yet adapted to the new environment. They did the same kind of experiment as Baumeister (1984) and found similar results so it can be said that the influence on performance is there and also might be the case with sports.

This was researched by Otten (2009), he further researched the effects of choking and looked at the relation between choking versus clutch performance in sports. They research this at the hand of an experiment with free throws in basketball. By manipulating pressure and

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focus to check if performance differs under different circumstances. He stated just like, Baumeister (1984) that pressure and heightened self-focus is bad for performing. Surprisingly they found that the experimental group performed better under pressure on average compared to the pre-test where there was no pressure manipulation. However, this result seemed to be the caused by the warm up effect since the control group also performed better during the test in comparison with the pre-test. This could arise by the effects found by Beilock and Carr (2001) who found that different circumstances have an influence on performance but when they get used to the new circumstances the manipulation might fail. This was not the case with the anxiety experiment where participants did mention to feel more anxiety after the manipula t io n then before, the control group however did not feel more anxiety. The players who feel more anxiety did perform worse than before. This is also interesting for penalties because just like free shots at basketball, it is a learnable skill and both players are under pressure. Perhaps it can also be found that players perform better under pressure with penalties.

Jordet (2007) researched the influence of stress, skill, and fatigue for kick outcomes during penalty shoot outs. He did this at the hand of archival data from the biggest tournaments in the world: the world championship, European championship and Copa Americano. Using a regression analyse, he researched the scoring percentage, playing time, age, position role and the kick number. He found a significant difference between the different tournaments and the kick numbers. There were significantly lesser goals scored in the World cup in comparison with Copa America and the European Championship. Secondly there was a significant difference in scoring in the first shoot in comparison with the other four penalties. He concludes his research that stress related processes have a greater influence then physical influence. A similar research was executed by Dohmen (2008), he researched the effects of stress on the performance on penalties at the hand of several regressions and using multiple variables. Dohmen used the size of the crowd and the effect of high stakes on the accuracy of penalties in football games. He used a dataset consisting out data from the Bundesliga. He concludes that, people who might feel being observed might perform worse than when they would not have been observed. He also states in his paper that their might be a home choking effect during penalties in football matches and that this should be researched. The difference between Jordet (2007) and Dohmen (2008) is the nature of the data, Jordet used big tournaments and Dohmen a normal competitio n. However, they also had similarities, Jordet found that with the most prestigious tourname nt more penalties where missed and that high pressure (Baumeister, 1984) could worsen performance. While Dohmen states that with the highest-pressure games, the performance could get worse.

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Kocher (2012) researched about the negative effect of psychological pressure on performance, he researched this by looking at penalties of different big tournaments and if there was a difference in penalty accuracy between the first shooting team and the second shooting team in a penalty shootout. The second team should have higher stress according to him because they already know the results of the first team. He could not find any significant results though. This was also found by Jordet (2007) who found almost no difference between shooting rounds. But since penalty shootouts do not happen during normal competition matches this paper is a little bit less relevant but it is important to keep in mind that psychological effects could influence the players while taking penalties.

In the paper of Noblet and Gifford (2002) is the sources of stress investigated by AFL footballers. They conducted a qualitative study, by interviewing 32 footballers. They underline the effect of stressed players. They mention the mental and physical health of the players gets worse when they are under a lot of stress. This causes lesser performance but can also lead to hospitalisation. Noblet and Gifford decided to investigate the sources of stress within sports and after their interviews they found some interesting results. They came with 4 different categories of stress sources; Negative aspects of organizational systems, worries about performance expectations and standards, career development concerns and negative aspects of interpersona l relationships. Worries about performance expectations and standards are in particular interesting for this paper. The players state that they are under constant pressure to perform, people expect very high performance of the players, they also worry that they won’t perform good enough. They also get stressed over their own form and the team’s results. These sources of stress where also found by Hanton, Fletcher and Coughlan (2005), they interviewed ten athletes performing on top levels from various sports. After their interviews they found the same sources of stress as Noblet and Gifford, for example pressure on the importance of their performance, injury’s and opponents.

Both the papers conclude that stress has a serious impact on performance and comes from multiple sources but they researched other sports then football, Jordet (2012) however did a qualitative research where he interviews 8 players about the different factors that influe nce the penalties and how they try to cope with the stress. This paper shows that when players are taking the penalty and before they are mostly using problem-focussed coping before taking the penalty like, looking at the keeper, task routine and shooting at the favourite corner. But also, they were being afraid to miss and thinking of other well-known penalty misses of other players. There was a difference between the perceived stress between the players, 50% was calm and the other half was stressed. This could also apply to penalties at the end of the seasons when

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stakes are high and there is a lot of stress. Three different authors all found sources of stress close to each other within different sports and football penalties, so it is clear that players receive stress through heightened pressure, playing out or at home and from taking the penalties itself.

Dohmen (2008) looked at the effects of stresses and other factors on the accuracy on penalties. However, he could not find a significant difference in penalty accuracy in the beginning of the competition in comparison with the end of the competition but he did not research the differences between teams in end of the seasons when not all the teams have much to win or to lose. Some could become champion and some may degrade to a lower competitio n. A mediator effect was also found by Jordet (2008), he found that when players have to take penalties in highly stressful situations leads to an increase of avoidance behaviour. This causes that penalties are missed, because players want that the stressful situation to be over as fast as possible and so football players rush their penalties and miss.

There is also a lot of other theories about what influences the accuracy of players during penalties. These papers differ between psychological reasons and strategies during penalties.

Masters, Kamp and Jackson (2007) investigated the influence of the location of the keeper on the result of a penalty, they did this at the hand of video clips of penalty kicks fro m World Cups, African Nations Cups, European Championships and UEFA Champions League matches. They found out that most of the keepers don’t stand in the middle of the goal when the penalty is taken. They could do this to let the players shoot in a certain direction or to get a player out of their automated sequence so that they miss the penalty. By standing different the player might think that it is better to shoot in a different corner as planned since the keeper is standing in their corner. Also, by standing in a different spot then the player is used to it might influence the player. They found that by not standing in the middle the keeper can direct around ten percent of the penalties towards the corner they are not standing in.

Piras and Vickers (2011), did a similar research on different kick ways and eye movement of the keepers to explain why penalties are missed. But it differs slightly from Master, Kamp and Jackson. Piras and Vickers research the effects at the hand of an experime nt where they tracked the eye movement of seven different goal keepers. They let the players take 15 inside foot kicks and 15 instep foot kicks. Both kicks differ in accuracy and speed. Instep are faster but less accurate and inside kicks are slower but more accurate. In the experime nt instep kicks where saved 28% towards 12% of the inside kicks. They also found out that there was no significant difference between the different kicking techniques in whether the player would score the penalty or not. This would mean that the goalkeeper does not have a big influence on whether the penalty is scored or not, which is different from what Master, Kamp

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and Jackson (2007) who did found that the keeper can has some influence on the player on where they shoot. However, Piras and Vickers (2011) do state that a goalkeeper could get some important information from the stance of the feet and hips before using a certain kicking technique. So, it does say something on how the penalty should be shot by the player. In a paper by Jordet (2012) it is said that players stress on how to take the penalty right before they take the penalty. Piras and Vickers (2011) state that it is important how the penalty is shot, shooting in the right corner and not in the hands of the keeper is important for accuracy and so it is logical and rational to worry about the way to shoot the penalty.

Finding the situations around the keeper different from normal could stress the player which could cause lesser performance. It could be a factor that contributes toward the already perceived stress. It could make very stressful situations with high stakes even more stressful then they already are, and cause players to miss.

Gelen (2010) talks about the influence of different warming-up methods on the penalty kick performance in soccer. This was research at the hand of an experiment with 26

professional soccer players who performed 4 different warm-up routines and then took a penalty. Gelen, talks about the importance of a good warming up for the performance of football players. A good warming up increases muscle-skeleton flexibility by affecting mechanical and neurological characteristics of muscles, what is good for the performance of athletes. Gelen wants to research with this paper if this is also the case with penalties. She concludes that dynamic warm-up exercises have the best effect on penalty kick performance and that static stretching exercises after low-intensity aerobics worsens the penalty

performance. Players could get stressed over their training and warming up schedules,

thinking that their current is wrong and worsens their performance. And looking at the paper of Gelen this could certainly be the case. At the other hand though, professional football teams have trainers and physiotherapists whose work it is to get the best performance out of the players and since there has been a lot of research on what is the best way to train. Since they know that they trained a lot and that they are good prepared for the match and the penalties. Therefore, this may even lessen the stress perceived by the players. Also, Otten (2009) found in his experiment that the warming up of his different experiment groups influenced the performance since the participants could get used to circumstances. This might also be the case with a normal football match.

Greenlees, Leyland, Thelwell and Filby (2008) researched the impact of the colour of the uniform and the influence of gaze behaviour. They did this by looking at video footage of 12 soccer goalkeepers. They state that non-verbal communication influences the way their

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success rate is perceived by the goal keepers. They found that when players look more at the goal and at the goal keeper, they have a higher performance and have a higher penalty accuracy. They found that by giving the impression of being dominant at an opponent will give a higher chance of scoring. They also found that when there is less than 10 percent gaze the colour of the t-shirt starts playing a role and that goal keepers starts looking at their

clothes. Whether a player looks at the keeper or not can also be a result of perceived stress. Of course, psychology plays a role in taking penalties but when a player has taken a penalty under high pressure. Football players would focus more on their standard automated process (Wallace, Baumeister and Vohs, 2005), which they develop while training their penalty shots (Jordet 2012). Therefor I don’t think that the colour of the t-shirt and how long a player looks at the keeper has a big influence.

When taking a penalty there are a lot of factors to take in account other than psychological stress. Kamp (2005) also states that it is important to take in regard all the different strategies. A keeper independent strategy, you chose beforehand in which corner you are gone shoot and how and disregard everything the keeper does beforehand. The second strategy is keeper-dependent strategy where the shooter reacts on how the keeper acts in the goal when the penalty is taken. They research this with an experiment where they let players take penalties with certain strategies, they had to shoot in a corner beforehand and with the other strategy they could shoot at the goal by looking at what the keeper was doing. After their research they couldn’t find a significant difference in both of the tactics. This could be because of the experimental setting which is not a good reflection of the real life and not because there is no difference in strategies. In their discussion Kamp states that other researchers found that performance is more influenced by external factors and stress and not by the strategies and by the keeper and that is probably the reason for the difference in performance with penalties then the different keeper strategies since there is no evidence for this theory.

Looking at the current theory about penalties, there has been a lot of research around the effects of the goal keeper, tactics and psychological factors, such as stress and gaze. But after looking at the theory I think that the factor that influences penalties the most is the influence of stress. The level of stress is influenced by many different factors, like the importance of their performance and the importance of the results from the matches and penalties. Therefore, I am going to research if there is difference between teams who have something to win or to lose in comparison with teams that do not have no stakes. According to Mossou (AD, 2018), clubs also have a lot of stress around degradation or the champions hip.

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Therefore, since the stress is high at the end of the season I expect that the performance gets lower.

Since one of the stressors who influences performance is the surroundings, travelling and environment of the place where the match is played according to Noblet and Gifford (2002) and Hanton, Fletcher and Coughlan (2005). Therefore, it might be interesting to look at the home match advantage influence on penalties.

Wolfson, Wakelin and lewis (2005) and Courneya and Carron (1992) and Schlenker (1995) used different factors for their explanations for the home advantage effects, Pollard (2008) uses the almost the same effects for his explanation, like crowd effect, travel effect, familiarity, referee bias. But Pollard also states the importance of psychological factors, and territoriality. He states that the team playing out knows about the home advantage and that they are affected by this perceived disadvantage and that they play even worse. Also, he underlines the territoriality nature of people and that this also affects the performance of the players. It was found that home players have an increase in hormone activity before a game.

Schlenker (1995) investigates the home match effect in his paper, he wrote that there are different factors influencing the performance. Regime regularity, field familiarity, player park matching, officiating bias (referee), crowd and strategy advantage. After investiga t ing archival data from different basketball and baseball matches, he states that the home team wins more of the matches, between 53% and 64%. Not all these factors have a big influence on penalties but some do, regime regularity, field familiarity, player park matching and crowd also play a big role during penalties. Knowing on which spot to aim behind the goal, knowing the piece of grass sticking out right in front of the penalty stipe and for example the fact that everything behind the goal looks the same as when you practised the penalties. These factors might contribute to shooting the penalties as it helps with the automation of the process.

The home advantage in sports was also researched in the paper of Courneya and Carron (1992), they looked at the same kind of factors as Schlenker (1995), but they have accommodated them in different categories; game location, game location factors, critical psychological states, critical behavioural states and performance outcome. After this theoretical framework they started their research with archival data collected from different papers. Their database contained multiple sports, Baseball, football (American), ice hockey, basketball and soccer from different skill levels. After their research they conclude that there is a home advantage in major team sports, that there is no difference in degree of home advantage between professional and college skill level, al the sports have the same kind of home advantage and is stable across time. And the last conclusion is that the magnitude of the home advantage varies

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between sports. So, this paper also supports the statement that there is a home advantage in sports. However, they believe that there is a difference between the games in general and the taking of the penalty. So, there might be an advantage in the match itself but it does not have to influence the outcome of the penalty kick.

Wolfson, Wakelin and Lewis (2005) further investigated this by looking how supporters perceive the home advantage. Home teams have a higher win rate, because of influence on referees and spectator behaviour influences the game. They also wrote that fans go to matches to see their team win and that they hope to see their team win the match. Also, they wrote that it might be the case in the end of the season but they did not investigate it. Wolfson, Wakelin and Lewis held a questionnaire under English football supporters and use archival data for checking the win rate. They found a significant result for the home advantage in the Englis h competition. Out of the questionnaires also came interesting results as explanation for the home advantage, fifty- nine percent thought that the home crowd encourages and inspires the players, seventeen percent states that home players benefit from their familiarity with the pitch, eleven percent thought home players feel territorial about their home ground and eleven percent thought home players do not have to travel or disrupt their routine. So, fans see themselves as a main reason why the home team wins. They think they help the home team by supporting and that when they are quiet it will discourage the home players. Supporters also think they influence the referee and they expect the players to play well for the crowd and to engage with them during the match. This research was conducted on football matches in general but this could also apply to penalties during football matches since these factors that supporters perceive are also attributable towards penalties.

In another paper by Pollard (2006) he investigates the difference between the home advantages between countries. He states that there might be difference in the home advantage effect between different domestic countries. He checked this at the hand of archival data. Pollard concludes that there is a bigger home advantage for Baltic countries, but there is almost no difference between countries in continental Europe. The difference can be explained by different cultures between countries and the different geographical differences. For example, there are a lot of different ethnic groups in Balkan lands which could trigger a bigger territoriality effect between clubs. Dohmen (2008) also investigated the home advantage effect in football for the Bundesliga, a continental European competition and he found data that contradicts Pollard (2006), penalties taken at home where chocked on more often in comparison with penalties taken out. Dohmen states that therefor that there might be a home choking effect during penalties in football. Dohmen states that the potential home choking effects needs further

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investigation in the future. The results he found around the home choking effect in the Bundesliga where significant. Furthermore, Dohmen states that choking while playing at home might have something to do with the presence of a supportive crowd.

Earlier the home choke effect was also investigated by Schlenker (1995) but he could not find evidence for this effect in his research. However, he did not look at football but he looked at basketball and baseball. Schlenker first looked at a small set of data and the home choke effect was visible, but after investigating the home choke effect with a bigger dataset it could not be found. This in comparison with Dohmen who did find evidence towards the home choke effect. Baumeister and Steinhilber (1984) also investigated the home choke effect. They investigated if the there was a difference in results when there was a supportive versus an unsympathetic audience. Baumeister describes it as that a player is in front of a supportive crowd the players have more self-presentational concerns then with an unsupportive crowd. Baumeister and Steinhilber came to the conclusion that there was no direct evidence that their variables influenced the result of the sport matches, although the data showed that that players perform worse with a supportive crowd at the end of the season. Schlenker and Leary (1982) state that self-presentation is linked with self-focused attention, which causes lower performance when it is high. Therefore, a supportive crowd could cause lower performance. They also investigated the effects of social anxiety and self-presentation caused by the preferred impression of the audience. They conclude that this had a negative effect on performance. Baumeister and Steinhilber (1984) researched this at the hand of two different sports, basketball and baseball. Out of the two archival researches Baumeister concludes that the performance of the first matches is better than the final matches. The home-field advantages are switched around and the attendance of a supportive crowd can harm the performance of the playing team. This could also be the case with penalties at the end of the season. When there is a home match the home playing team with high stakes could perform worse than when there were no stakes at play. However, Schlenker (1995) later invalidated this with his paper.

Wallace, Baumeister and Vohs (2005) also researched the home disadvantage, this build further on the previous paper from Baumeister (1984), but it takes a look at a different side of the home choking effect. In this paper they look more at the physical side of the effect. Cognitive and self-regulatory resources can be better be used on different tasks during a match. Or when there are high stakes towards achieving a certain goal. In their paper they also conclude that a supportive audience can boost effort but it can worsen the skills especially when self-focused attention is raised and there is a shift towards controlled performance instead of automated performance. This could also be the case with football penalties where there are huge

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stakes at the end of the season and the players are really put under pressure by the expectations of the club and the supporters.

As can be read there have been a lot of research towards the home advantage, but the effect on penalties has only been investigated by Dohmen (2008) yet, and he found that the home advantage influences the result of penalties. And also, perhaps some of the found factors explaining the home advantages might have a greater influence later in the season. Therefore, I will research if there is a home advantage effect at teams with high stakes and with teams with no stakes and if this effect differs much between the groups. However, first I will look if there is a home advantage at penalties without making this differentiation. This effect also exists in other sports so perhaps also during football penalties. Therefore, it would be interesting to investigate what the influence is of playing at home or playing at another football club. Does it enlarger the pressure and causes more misses at home or do they perform better at home at the end of the season?

3. Methodology

The research will be conducted at the hand of a database composed out of data which was gathered via archival data collection. The data is collected from different internet sources where information and statistical information is collected from taken penalties. Data about the location, the date of the penalties which player took the penalty and if it was scored or not. The dataset was formed based on the information of these different sites. In this dataset there is data gathered from 9 seasons in the Dutch, English, Italian, German and Spanish competition. The first season of the dataset is from the season 2008-2009 and all the seasons following this first season. The variables gathered are, team, stance, if they play away or at home, if the penalty is scored and the age of the shooter. The variables I will use for this research are, stance, home or out, age, minute.

To research the effect of degradation and the chance of becoming victors on the penalty scorings chance, I will filter the data and only use the penalty’s valid for my research at the hand of several conditions. I will look at the 6 last counting rounds for the competitions with in total are 34 rounds, which are; The Netherlands and Germany, and at the last 7 counting rounds for the longer and bigger competitions, which are; Italy, Spain and England. I have determined this starting data and the hand of different news sources and club forums to see when most of the people started talking about stress around championship and degradation. When for example a certain team is already champion in round 30 I will use round 29 till 24 on 23 instead of 34 till 29 on 28. So that all the important matches will be taken in account. Furthermore, I will use

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the teams that still have a decent chance on degrading or becoming champion to make an accurate measurement. So, when a club is a couple points from the degradation zone I will use them in the calculations. For example, when there are 4 rounds to play, they can still earn 12 points, so when they are 5 points above the demotion zone they still have a decent chance to go down in the rankings and therefore they will be taken in account for the calculations. The moderation effect of the home advantage will also be researched to see if it influences the penalties.

I chose to compare all the matches with no stakes with the last matches which have higher stakes. This results in an N of 4338 instead of N=954. N=954 are all the penalties from the last playing ground of the seasons, only the last 6-7 playing rounds, while N=4338 consists out of all the matches with no stakes in the beginning of the season. The matches at the beginning in the season also do not have high stakes and therefore there is a less stress on the shoulder of the players. I first calculated the different scorings means with matches from the whole season and with only the last rounds. For the matches with no stakes there was almost no difference in the accuracy of the taken penalties1. Also, when taking the penalties from the

entire season, the top and bottom teams are also including making the average more equal. Therefore, I have decided to use the entire season in the calculations. This would make the calculations more accurate.

After I collected the penalties I will first compare the means between the different groups to look if there is a difference in penalty accuracy between clubs that have a degradation chance, a chance of becoming champion and clubs in the middle and all the penalties at the beginning of the seasons. Then I will follow that up with looking at the correlations between the different variables available, stance, playing at home, minute and age. These variables will also be used as control variables later on. These are chosen with different reasons, older players could be more experienced with taking penalties and with performing under pressure, crowd and the home effect both came up during the theoretical research, where papers about performing under pressure during sports are influenced by the crowd and by the home effect. The stance could also influence the perceived stress, when a player is 7-0 ahead and has to take a penalty he will probably feel far less stressed. Since I suspect that teams with higher pressure perform worse I will conduct one sided calculations.

1 N=4388, no stakes, mean= 77.01%

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At last I will use the data in a regression. A Multivariate logistic regression analysis for the relationship between the outcomes. To be able to use this regression, there cannot be multicollinearity between the variables. Therefore, I will first check the variables for this. I will use score, the variable that indicates if the penalty is scored or not, as the dependant variable and I will use home, stance and championship/degradations as the factor variables. Age and the minute will be covariate variables in this regression. The reference category for this regression is scoring (1) the penalty. So, the results are in comparison with all the scored penalties. An outmatch is a zero, a home match is a one. When behind it is a 1 and when the stance is a draw or behind then it is a zero. When a team is ahead it is coded as a one and when behind or a draw is a zero. Chance for championship is a one and when there are no stakes or chance for degradation, then it is a zero. When a team has a chance for degradation it is a one and for championship or no stakes, then it is a zero. My hypotheses is that both degradation teams and champion teams will perform worse then the team without stakes.

For the home advantage I will look at the different descriptive statistics by looking splitting the penalties for the home teams and the out teams to see if there is a differe nce between the two groups. My hypotheses are that the home playing team perform better at penalties then the out playing team.

Then I will check for the moderating effect of the home advantage. By computing a multivariate regression with the same variables as hypotheses 1 to see the influence of the home advantage on penalties at matches with high stress levels. I expect that while playing at home with high stakes at the end of the season penalties are missed more often, what was predicted by Dohmen (2008).

At last I will check the differences between countries and players on individual level to see if there are big differences between the players and countries and to check if there are big quality differences between players from the different groups. I will do this by taking a sample of the players and look at their accuracy while taking penalties at high stakes and compare it with the penalties taken while there were low stakes.

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4. Results

First, I ran descriptive statistics on the 4338 penalties collected from the Bundesliga, Eredivis ie, La Liga, premier league and the Italian Serie A. In table 1 are the results of the comparison of means off the 4338 penalties taken an average of 76.89 percent have been scored with a standard deviation of 0.422, this is high but that is because it is a categorial variable. These penalties were taken by 1390 different football players from various clubs.

Regarding the first hypotheses about the difference at the end of the season between teams that have a chance of degradation and have a chance of becoming the champion, the results of these calculations can be seen in Table 1. The average penalty accuracy from degradation teams is 72.85% with N=221 in comparison with Championship teams who have an accuracy of 79.61% with N=152 a no stakes team has an accuracy of 75.60%. It is also interesting to look at the different correlations with the variables. Although it is not significa nt with a p value of 0.072 and it is not very big, it is interesting to see that there is a small negative correlation between score and degradation. The same goes with chance of championship and its correlation with score, with 0.012 it has a small positive correlation with score but also it is not significant with an p-value of 0.210.

Looking at other correlation it is interesting to see that there is a significant correlation of -0.057 when the score is behind and 0.080 when the team is ahead with the champions hip penalties. When behind there is a negative correlation with scoring and while ahead there is a positive correlation with scoring. This is interesting to see because with degradation it is the other way around. When behind there is a positive correlation of 0.019 and a negative Table 1 Descriptive statistics and Correlation

Variables M ean Std. D V1 V2 V3 V4 V5 V6 V7 V8 V9 1. Score 0,77 0,422 - 2. Degradation 0,73 0,446 -0,022 - 3. Championship 0,8 0,404 0,012 -0,044** - 4. No stakes 0,77 0,421 0,009 -0,756** -0,621** - 5. Behind 0,77 0,424 -0,006 0,019 -0,057** 0,022 - 6. Draw 0,77 0,424 -0,007 -0,002 -0,019 0,015 -,562** - 7. Ahead 0,78 0,416 0,014 -0,017 ,080** 0,039** -,416** -,519** - 8. Home 0,77 0,419 0,021 0,003 0,029* -0,022 -,167** 0,042** ,127** - 9. M inute 52,89 26,423 -0,01 -0,021 0,013 0,008 ,186** -,347** ,189** -0,021 - 10. Age 26,2 4,566 -0,006 -0,009 -0,01 0,013 0,030* 0,012 -,045** -0,021 -0,007

**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (1-tailed). *. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (1-tailed).

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correlation of -0.017 when ahead. Which would mean that teams scores penalties more often when the team is behind in score.

After the descriptive calculations, I computed a multivariate logistic regression. However, I first checked the data for multicollinearity and all the VIF values where between 1.003 and 1.616, it can be seen in table 3. When looking at the results, the first that stand out is that there are no significant relationships between the variables. Some variables do show a tendency towards a certain direction and are close to significance. Degradation with a

significance of 0.150 has an OR of 0.799 this means that teams that play for degradation are less likely to score in comparison with teams who have no stakes. It shows a direction but since the p value is bigger then 0.05 it can not be said that is statistically significant. For the teams that play for championships there is another relationship. There it shows that teams who play for championship are more likely to score with an OR of 1.150 but also this result is not statistically significant with a p value of 0.495. So, for hypotheses 1 which I can’t say that there is a statistical difference between teams that have no stakes, play for championship and for degradation. The only thing that can be said is that there is a tendency towards champions hip scoring more and degradation teams scoring less.

While looking at Table 4 for hypotheses 2 it is visible that there is a small difference in the mean for scoring the penalty between playing at home and playing out. Playing at home has

Table 3: Multivariate logistic regression

Variable Sig OR Minute 0,359 1,001 Age 0,715 1,003 Behind 0,626 0,954 Draw 0,367 0,919 Home 0,205 1,099 Championship 0,507 1,146 Degradation 0,205 0,798

The reference category is: 1.

Note: The odds ratio (OR) reflects the chance of achieving success, compared with the reference

Table 2: M ulticolinearity values Variable VIF Championship 1,009 Degradation 1,003 Home 1,034 M inute 1,138 Age 1,003 Behind 1,519 Draw 1,616

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a mean of 77.58 percent and playing out has a mean of 75.78 percent. The only interesting result concerning the home advantage on penalties is that there are 2708 penalties taken at home and 1680 penalties for the team playing out. That is a difference of 1028 penalties which is nearly thirty five percent less penalties for the teams playing out in comparison with the team playing at home.

For the hypotheses 3 I conducted the same statistical calculations but with the file split in penalties taken at home and penalties taken by the team playing out. The results of the descriptive calculations are in table 4. There are some differences between the statistics when playing at home in comparison with penalties in another stadium. There is a small differe nce between games with stakes around winning the competition, the scoring rate is almost the same and also the correlations are almost the same. Although when playing at home the correlations are more significant. With degradation teams there is a 2 percent different in accuracy with penalties. Also, it is visible that the correlations are only a tiny bit stronger while playing at home in comparison with playing out.

Table 4: descriptive statistics and correlations

Home M ean Std. D V1 N 1. Score 0,78 0,417 - 2708 2. Degradation 0,73 0,445 -0,024 138 3. Championship 0,8 0,4 0,012 105 4. No stakes 0,78 0,417 0,011 2465 Out M ean Std. D V1 1. Score 0,76 0,429 - 1680 2. Degradation 0,71 0,454 -0,019 83 3. Championship 0,79 0,41 0,012 47 4. No stakes 0,76 0,45 0,008 1550

**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (1-tailed). *. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (1-tailed).

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For hypotheses 3 a multiveriate regression has been computed, the results can be seen in table 5. For the Championship it is seen that there is no significant difference between playing at home or away and the relation with scoring. But the OR shows a tendency towards scoring more away than at home with a OR of 1.115 at home and a OR of 1.156 while playing out. However, the P values are 0.664 and 0.689, so the results are not significant. For the degradation teams there were also, some small differences between playing at home and playing out. The OR at home, is 0.782 with a p value of 0.215. While playing out the OR is 0.829 with a p value of 0.457. It is interesting to see that both groups score better playing out then at home. Also, the stance has a positive influence while playing out while it has a negative influence at home. Age of the player and time of the penalty does not have a big influence and no big differe nce between the home playing teams and the out playing team.

If you compare this with the results of Dohmen (2008) who used data from the Bundesliga you can see a conformation of his results. He said that home choke is more likely to occur while playing at home with high stakes. Looking at a dataset from mult ip le competitions you can see a tendency towards his expectations but the results where not significant. So perhaps that idea of Dohmen was wrong and the home choke effect is not there while taking penalties with high stakes.

Table 5: multivariate regression.

Home Sig OR Minute 0,968 1 Age 0,894 1,001 Behind 0,827 0,973 Draw 0,082 0,82 Championship 0,664 1,115 Degradation 0,215 0,782 Out Sig OR Minute 0,172 1,003 Age 0,713 1,005 Behind 0,926 1,014 Draw 0,323 1,173 Championship 0,689 1,156 Degradation 0,457 0,829 The reference category is: 1.

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I also took a small look if there where differences between countries. Perhaps there some countries feel the championship or degradation pressure more. Or perhaps they are more used to it since it is not the first time playing for this position, for example La Liga almost always have Barcelona and Real Madrid on top and these players might be more used to the pressure. The results of this comparison are visible in Table 6 and there are some huge differe nces between the countries. Teams playing for the championship in the Bundesliga and in the La Liga perform much worse then the teams playing for championship in the Premier league, Eredivisie and Serie A. There are also some big differences between the teams playing for degradation, In Serie A and the Premier League the accuracy is much lower in comparison with the other countries.

To control the quality of the players I made some descriptive calculations to see if there are big differences in performance. The first thing that stands out is that most players do not

Table 6: descriptive statistics

Eredivisie M ean Std. D. Correlation with score N

Championship 0,88 0,332 0,043 25

Degradation 0,77 0,43 -0,008 26

No stakes 0,78 0,412 -0,025 672

Premier leage M ean Std. D. V1 N

Championship 0,82 0,387 0,022 34 Degradation 0,67 0,477 -0,064* 45 No stakes 0,78 0,415 0,035 774 S erie A M ean Std. D. V1 N Championship 0,9 0,304 0,063* 40 Degradation 0,67 0,474 -0,045 52 No stakes 0,76 0,428 -0,008 1025 La Liga M ean Std. D. V1 N Championship 0,63 0,492 -0,57* 32 Degradation 0,8 0,407 0,021 54 No stakes 0,76 0,427 0,019 895 Bundesliga M ean Std. D. V1 N Championship 0,71 0,463 -0,021 21 Degradation 0,75 0,438 -0,01 44 No stakes 0,77 0,422 0,021 649

**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (1-tailed). *. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (1-tailed).

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have taken many penalties at the most important times and that most players perform the same when taking a penalty at an important moment. Looking at this small comparison though it does stand out that 2 players really perform much worse then the others. Ronaldo and Hazard both score much less in comparison to the other players, while the rest of the penalties they have taken, have a very high accuracy. So perhaps certain players are just much more influenced by the perceived stress then others.

For degradation the total mean is higher with stakes then without stakes. However, in comparison with teams going for the championship most players for degradation only have shot 1 or 2 penalties for their team causing a low N, this could be caused by the fact that teams leave the competitions when they degrade. It can be seen in table 7 that some players perform slight ly worse, however most of the players perform better then with a penalty with no stakes but that could be influenced by the low N. It can also be seen that most of the players of both groups have an accuracy level around the same amount with a few exceptions.

Table 7: descriptive statistics, quality check of the players

Speler Cham. Score mean STD N Score mean no stakes STD N

Suarez 1 0 6 0,75 0,444 20 Hazard 0,33 0,577 3 0,91 0,302 11 Totti 1 0 4 0,86 0,351 36 Vidal 1 0 2 0,82 0,393 17 M essi 0,8 0,422 10 0,83 0,381 41 Neymar 1 0 2 0,75 0,463 8 Sahin 0 0 1 0,5 0,548 6 Robben 0,67 0,577 3 1 0 10 Caligiuri 1 0 1 1 0 5 Ronaldo 0,56 0,527 9 0,9 0,296 63 Total 0,76 0,303 41 0,85 0,335 217

Speler Deg. Score mean STD N Score mean no stakes STD N

Simons 1 0 1 0,82 0,405 11 Lasnik 1 0 2 0,75 0,5 4 Bony 1 0 2 0,69 0,48 13 Aiyegbeni 0,5 0,707 2 0,6 0,548 5 Adam 0,5 0,707 2 0,91 0,302 11 M iccoli 1 0 2 0,85 0,376 13 Di M ichele 0,5 0,707 2 0,57 0,535 7 Tchite 1 0 3 0,75 0,5 4 Senna 1 0 2 0 0 2 Gabi 1 0 1 0,83 0,408 6 Siqueira 1 0 1 0,82 0,405 11 El Arabi 0,83 0,408 6 1 0 8 Total 0,85 0,257 26 0,78 0,382 95

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5. Conclusion and discussion

After conducting all the research, the final question still needs answering do clubs who have a chance of degradation or championship miss more penalties then clubs who have nothing to win or to lose. After researching this at the hand of multiple regressions and descriptive statistics it can be said that there is no significant difference between the different teams.

So, it cannot be said that teams who play for the championship or for degradation play worse than teams who do not have stakes. Although there is a slight difference to be seen in the means. This could have different reasons, payers could perform better in higher player teams, they have better skilled are trained better have access to the best facilities. With those things available their performance could be lifted above the general average of scored penalties. Teams in the degradation zone could have far less facilities and recourses available to train performing under stress and their trainers could be worse hence the reason that they could perform slight ly below average. Players who play in lower team are also often not the best players availab le. Most certainly the older players at those clubs are not the best, since better and bigger clubs scout and buy talents on younger age. On the other hand, older players could be more experienced with playing in a big stadium, they can get used to the fans both at home and at out matches, where you could say that maybe because of the experience they got, that they even should perform better at penalties then the higher clubs. Younger upcoming talents also play at the lower teams and when they take the penalties they could break under the stress since they are not used to it. Teams playing for the championship are in comparison with the lower and middle teams also more experienced with performing under pressure. They know they got fans expecting to win, with does not always have to be the case with the lower playing teams. The higher teams like for example Barcelona also got a lot of players who play in big tournaments like the world championship where they perhaps even stand under bigger pressure to perform then in the normal competitions. And they could get more used to performing under constant pressure. Those could be the reasons the teams who are playing for championship perform slightly better and do not succumb under the stress they receive from the clubs and the fans for performing.

Because of the potential influence of the quality level of the players, I did a small research to see the performance of different players to check for their individual performance to see how they performed. Out of that small check came some interesting results which can be seen in table 7. You can see that most of the players perform similar to how they perform normally. However, a few players did perform worse while taking penalties at important moments for the championship. For the sample that was taken from degradation penalties the

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scoring average was higher when the penalties had higher stakes. However, it should be said that most of the players taking penalties at degradation moments did not take many penalties in general in comparison with players from teams playing for the championship. This could be caused by the fact that degradation teams could leave the competition and that in certain competitions, for example the La Liga, the same teams always are in the top position. However, it was interesting to see that most of the players performed around the same level with penalties taken with high stakes and with penalties taken at a normal level.

For hypotheses 2, where I looked at the difference in performing at home in comparison with playing out I also could not find any significant results. The accuracy means were almost the same and, in the regressions there also could not be found any significant results around the home advantage. This is different than the results that Dohmen (2008) found in his paper, where he did find a moderating effect of the home advantage. The only thing that really sprung out is that home teams get far more penalties then the out playing teams. This could have several reasons; the referee is far more likely to give penalties to the home team because the pressure on his shoulder received by the fans. Or that the out playing team is stressed or influe nced otherwise by the home crowd that they make faults quicker, therefore causing more penalties. This is hard to investigate trough archival data. It might be better to interview some referee s and players to see if they are affected by these factors. Another thing could be, is that when playing at home, the home team plays more on the offence than when playing out therefore spending more time in the area around the goal. That could lead to more penalties. This is also hard to research trough archival data and could be checked by comparing heat maps to see if the home and out teams play on different parts of the field then normally.

For hypotheses 3 I also could not find any significant results for the moderating effect of the home advantages. The home team playing for championship does perform slightly better playing out then at home. The degradation team also scored slightly more penalties out then at home, but the difference was not big and not significant. When looking at the means it differs two percent between at home and playing out for the degradation teams while the teams playing at the top only differ one percent. Looking at the expectation in the paper of Dohmen (2008), he said that there perhaps was a home choking effect during penalties with high stakes at the end of the season. However, since they could not be found, his expectations are perhaps wrong. The effect of the stance did differ between the home and out playing team. Playing out, draw stance has a positive effect while the effect is negative while playing at home but the results were not significant. There could be multiple reasons for this, the home advantage does not really have an influence on the penalties but only on the normal gameplay. Since penalties

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are trained extensively and are done through an automated process. Maybe the players are so focused they close themselves of from the public and solely focus on the penalty itself and they are not influenced by the crowd and perhaps more influenced by other psychological factors like, time, experience and culture.

I also made a small comparison between the different countries of the dataset and there were some differences between the countries, in Spain degradation teams play much better and championship worse while in Italy the difference is much bigger and in the Bundesliga the difference is very minimal. This could be caused by the quality of the competitions or perhaps its influenced by the different cultures playing in the competitions.

Overall the answer on the research question can be answered by saying that having the higher stakes of championship or degradation does not the influences the performance of the players during penalties. Also, there is no moderating effect of the home advantage. There was only a slight tendency in the results towards degradation teams performing a bit worse and the champion teams performing slightly better than the teams without stakes. However as said as before these could also be caused by other factors, like experience or skills. Those were not researched in this paper since they are hard to measure through archival data and are better researched trough different methods like interviews. This could be something for future research however.

As most of the research, this research also has some limitations to it. Since it only uses data from 5 different countries the external validity is limited, when you take more countries in the calculations the results might differ from the ones that I found on this research question. But since I used five European countries with big competitions I think these results can be generalized towards other European countries like France or Belgium. This since these countries are culturally alike to the countries I used in my research. But I think it is harder to generalize the results to countries outside Europe, like towards the Chinese or southern American competitions. They are culturally different and might handle stress different ly. Although you can also make the case that many Southern American and African players already play in Europe and that their cultural already influences the result. The internal validity on the other hand could be better, the data used is carefully selected by looking at all the seasons of the different countries I could accurately identify the important matches with high stakes for most teams and after that by taking the right statistic calculations to calculate the results. However, it could be made better if financial statuses where known on how much money they lose or gain by degrading or becoming champion. It could also be made better by looking at other environmental conditions surrounding the times at the time of the last matches but since

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the time limitations on this research that could unfortunately not be done. Lastly, the missing of the penalties could also be caused by something completely different, the keeper could also be the person who has a large influence on the result. How does he perform under pressure and does he make the right decisions?

For further research the database could be expanded with more countries to and with more seasons to check if there would be different results. It could also be interesting to add multiple seasons from different countries outside Europe to see if there is a difference between for example Southern American countries and African countries in scoring penalties. Maybe those countries are more influenced by stress since the clubs have less money than clubs in Europa and therefore can afford less good care for handling stress. The current data could also be used to check if there are more moderating effect and not only look at the home advantage effect, to see if other variables also affect the scoring chance of players. In the future there could also be looked in to other variables causing players to miss penalties like perhaps weather influences or experience and skills in taking penalties.

6. References:

Baumeister, R.F. (1984). Choking Under Pressure: Self-Consciousness and Paradoxical Effects of Incentives on Skillful Performance. Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology, 46(3), 610- 620.

Baumeister, R. F., & Steinhilber, A. (1984). Paradoxical effects of supportive audiences on performance under pressure: The home field disadvantage in sports

championships. Journal of personality and social psychology, 47(1), 85.

Beilock, S. L., & Carr, T. H. (2001). On the fragility of skilled performance: What governs choking under pressure?. Journal of experimental psychology: General, 130(4), 701. Courneya, K. S., & Carron, A. V. (1992). The home advantage in sport competitions: A

literature review. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 14(1), 13-27. The Conversation. (2018, June 2). Hard Evidence: how much is the Champions League

worth? Retrieved April 13, 2018, from http://theconversation.com/hard-evidence-how-much-is-the-champions- league-worth-42376

Dohmen, T.J. (2008). Do professionals choke under pressure? Journal of Economic Behavior

& Organization, 65(3-4), 636-653.

Gelen, E. (2010). Acute effects of different warm-up methods on sprint, slalom dribbling, and penalty kick performance in soccer players. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning

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