| Abstract: |
This paper examines the role of national identity in explaining on field
aggression during soccer competitions between national teams. In particular,
this paper empirically investigates whether differences in macro identity
markers such as: the economy, religion, education, governance and power
between nation-states influence football players’ aggressiveness across a
range of international FIFA competitions. We analyse the finals of the FIFA
World, Confederations and Under 20’s World Cups as well as the Olympic
tournaments from 1994 to 2012, resulting in 1088 individual matches. Our
aggression focus is derived from both the (i) weighted measure of penalties
(red and yellow cards) and; (ii) the count of sanctions (fouls) issued during
a game as a proxy measure for on field aggression. We generate national
identity factors from a set of macro level variables in order to estimate the
size of national differences, from which we determine the impact that national
identity has on the emergence of on field aggression between rival countries.
Our results show that these national identity factors are significant
predictors of aggression, while the match specific variables seem to be of
less importance. Interestingly, our results also show that these aggression
factors disappear once we include referee fixed effects, indicating that while
national differences are played out on the football pitch the referees are
effective at controlling the aggression. |