Researchers reveal the colour of a goalie’s strip can affect a striker’s success

The colour of a goalie’s strip can affect a striker’s success
Strikers are less likely to be successful in a penalty shootout against a goalkeeper wearing a red strip.

Research by the University of Chichester presented at the British Psychological Society’s Annual Conference on 16th April 2010, suggests that the colour red may have an unconscious influence on the perception of failure, causing strikers to perform worse.

Dr Iain Greenlees and Michael Eynon at the University of Chichester looked at the performance and the expectation of success of 40 university footballers against goalkeepers wearing black, blue, green, yellow, and red strips.

Each of the 40 strikers took a total of 20 penalties, 10 against a goalkeeper wearing black and 10 against a goalkeeper wearing either a blue, yellow, green or red shirt. Footballers were asked to estimate how many penalties out of 10 they would score and give a confidence rating for their estimate.

The researchers found that, although there was no difference in how many goals a striker thought he would score, the fewest number of goals were scored against a goalie in red (54 per cent success rate). This was followed by yellow (69 per cent success rate), with no difference between blue and green (72 per cent and 75 per cent, respectively).

Dr Greenlees at Lecturer in Sports & Exercise, said: “These findings lend support to the idea that red clothing could give a sportsperson or team a small but meaningful advantage (one penalty in five) in a competitive encounter. It also has implications for sports in which a competitor is assigned a coloured corner randomly, like boxing and martial arts in the Olympics.”
Michael Eynon carried out this study with Dr Iain Greenlees while an undergraduate at the University of Chichester.