| Abstract: |
Some Researchers consider soccer matches as the stylization of a war in other
battlefields. Such approach was largely used to interpret the violent
phenomena related to the soccer environment, while less attention has been
paid to the «potential» role of political and economic interactions between
countries in determining the aggressive attitude of players on the pitch. In
our paper we empirically investigate if and how political hostility among
countries reverberates on a soccer pitch by influencing players’
aggressiveness. The analysis focuses on official matches played by national
teams in the final phases of the European and World Cup tournaments since
2000. We estimate a Negative Binomial regression including both political and
sport variables, and we find that (a) commercial hostility; (b) the level of
diplomatic relationships, (c) power asymmetry and (d) education gap between
countries are positively and significantly associated with aggressiveness of
the players on the pitch, approximated by the number of yellow and red cards.
That is, briefly stated, international hostility reverberates into the pitch.
Moreover, sport covariates present the expected signs, namely results show
that the closeness of the teams, their ranking and the stage of the game
(knockout stages with respect to the group phases) are also crucial in
determining the cautions. |