How England Can Win the World Cup by Changing Their Shirts

Shouldn’t somebody be taking research like this more seriously?

After the claims made by Russian scientists that orange goalkeeper shirts are good for goalkeepers’ shut out rates were roundly derided, we have again more scientific evidence to show that the colour of shirt that football players wear in a game can materially impact the result of a match.

Chelsea have already apparently listened to the research.  Petr Cech changed his shirt to lurid orange, ahead of the Champions League final in 2008. That game of course, Chelsea lost – on penalties – and so not very much attention was focused on the impact of Cech’s shirt.

Football kit colour scientifically tested

Nonetheless – here we go again. Research on red goalkeeper shirts and their impact was publicised at the end of last week by scientists at the University of Chichester, and the results are actually quite stunning. 

All nations going into the World Cup this summer should surely be taking note – particularly perennial penalty shoot out chokers like England.

So what is the impact of red kits? Let’s get to the stats.

Soak it up you statos: penalty success rates (i.e. number of times penalty takers score)

• Green goalkeeper shirts: 75 percent of penalties are scored
• Blue goalkeeper shirts: 72 percent of penalties are scored
• Yellow goalkeeper shirts: 69 percent of penalties are scored
• Red goalkeeper shirts: 54 percent of penalties are scored

Before you rush to exclaim that this is a load of baloney – the research was undertaken under relatively controlled conditions.

The scientists – sports psychology experts – tested 400 penalties from 40 different university footballers.

Several goalkeepers were used, but each goalkeeper rotated the shirts they wore, to eliminate the impact of bias from one keeper being better than another.

Interestingly, although the players said that the red shirts made no difference to their thoughts or confidence that they were aware of, nonetheless we get this incredible result.

Cue weird music – can these stats be true?

But what’s going on here? Can it really be true that when footballers see red they get the subconscious heebie-jeebies and become prone to fluffing?

This question takes us far beyond the happily ignorant world of football and into the realms of the subconscious mind, where I’m not going to venture. But just stick with the stats!

Whatever the reasons may be, the statistics are simple: red shirt – penalty has a 46 percent chance of missing. Green shirt, only a 25 percent chance of the taker missing. That’s nearly double chance of a miss when the goalie wears red!

England would be wise to remember what colour shirts they were wearing on that famous day at Wembley in 1966.