By John Considine
During my gaelic football playing days I had the perverse pleasure of listening to strange conversation between our full-back and a member of the management team. Our full-back had problems with his ankles during the season. As a result, he had taken to wearing ankle-high rugby boots to support his ankle. The player was explaining the advantages and disadvantages of the rugby boots to the member of the management team. The full-back said the main disadvantage of the rugby boots was he got no direction with his clearances. The member of the management team did not see that as a disadvantage. He said to the player “You are a defender. What direction do you need on your clearances?” It seems that less is expected of players in such defensive roles. I was reminded of this story when I read a paper by Alex Bryson, Bernd Frick and Rob Simmons that was published in the December 2013 issue of the Journal of Sports Economics. The authors think a little like the member of the management team as I will explain later.
In a previous posting (here) I presented the results from the paper. The paper examines the difference in salaries for players depending on whether they are predominantly right-footed, left-footed, or able to play equally well with both feet. The authors found there was a premium for players that were equally good with both feet.
The paper offers some wonderful ideas for discussion. The authors present their ideas when motivating their study and discussing their results. Some of the reasons they suggest might lead two-footed players to be paid a premium are likely to get some opposition, as well support, from football fans.
There is a discussion about the relationship between mental and physical characteristics. One could fill an off-season with the possibilities!!! The authors rely on a paper by Kevin Denny and Vincent O’Sullivan that discusses the relationship between handedness and IQ. They proceed to link handedness to footedness and link IQ to sporting intelligence. This is super conversation material for sports fans. It might help explain why we hear commentators talk about players having “an educated left foot” but rarely hear about a player having "an educated right foot”. (One of the paper’s author is no stranger to the examining the link between measures of intelligence and sporting ability. A widely cited paper by Rob Simmons and David Berri examined the predictive power of the Wonderlic IQ test used on NFL quarterbacks.)
Another talking point from the 2013 Journal of Sports Economics paper is the claim that footedness is not important for goalkeepers. Bryson, Frick and Simmons classify players as defenders, forwards, goalkeepers, and midfielders. However, goalkeepers are dropped from their analysis. Why? According to the authors, “goalkeepers are excluded as footedness is not especially relevant for their performance”. Because of the availability bias, fans are likely to point to the high profile goalkeeping mistakes from a week ago – although both mistakes are not really about footedness. Southampton’s Artur Boruc gets his feet mixed up (view it here). Spurs Hugo Lloris has a poor clearance a couple of seconds into their game against Manchester City (view it here).
Let us return to the way the authors model defenders. Although the authors clearly say that being adept with both feet is an advantage, they do say there are some positions in which “being a predominately one-footed player could be an advantage”. The positions the authors list as possibly benefiting from a one-sided player are left-back and right-back. Why would a left-back or right-back be better off being predominately one-footed? Surely it is an unambiguous advantage to be two-footed. A two-footed player can do all the things a one-footed player can do. And, they can do a bit more.
So why can't the authors avoid the trap of claiming that a one-footed player might have an advantage in these defensive positions? I believe it arises from the common perception of the mental capacity of defenders. Rather than trusting the defender to make to appropriate decision about what foot to use (and associated decisions) the common perception is that the defender can't make these decisions correctly. Maybe a two-footed defender is over confident and misjudges the risk-return trade-off. This would explain why a well-worn phrase in sport is "Keep it simple, Stupid".
The paper offers some wonderful ideas for discussion. The authors present their ideas when motivating their study and discussing their results. Some of the reasons they suggest might lead two-footed players to be paid a premium are likely to get some opposition, as well support, from football fans.
There is a discussion about the relationship between mental and physical characteristics. One could fill an off-season with the possibilities!!! The authors rely on a paper by Kevin Denny and Vincent O’Sullivan that discusses the relationship between handedness and IQ. They proceed to link handedness to footedness and link IQ to sporting intelligence. This is super conversation material for sports fans. It might help explain why we hear commentators talk about players having “an educated left foot” but rarely hear about a player having "an educated right foot”. (One of the paper’s author is no stranger to the examining the link between measures of intelligence and sporting ability. A widely cited paper by Rob Simmons and David Berri examined the predictive power of the Wonderlic IQ test used on NFL quarterbacks.)
Another talking point from the 2013 Journal of Sports Economics paper is the claim that footedness is not important for goalkeepers. Bryson, Frick and Simmons classify players as defenders, forwards, goalkeepers, and midfielders. However, goalkeepers are dropped from their analysis. Why? According to the authors, “goalkeepers are excluded as footedness is not especially relevant for their performance”. Because of the availability bias, fans are likely to point to the high profile goalkeeping mistakes from a week ago – although both mistakes are not really about footedness. Southampton’s Artur Boruc gets his feet mixed up (view it here). Spurs Hugo Lloris has a poor clearance a couple of seconds into their game against Manchester City (view it here).
Let us return to the way the authors model defenders. Although the authors clearly say that being adept with both feet is an advantage, they do say there are some positions in which “being a predominately one-footed player could be an advantage”. The positions the authors list as possibly benefiting from a one-sided player are left-back and right-back. Why would a left-back or right-back be better off being predominately one-footed? Surely it is an unambiguous advantage to be two-footed. A two-footed player can do all the things a one-footed player can do. And, they can do a bit more.
So why can't the authors avoid the trap of claiming that a one-footed player might have an advantage in these defensive positions? I believe it arises from the common perception of the mental capacity of defenders. Rather than trusting the defender to make to appropriate decision about what foot to use (and associated decisions) the common perception is that the defender can't make these decisions correctly. Maybe a two-footed defender is over confident and misjudges the risk-return trade-off. This would explain why a well-worn phrase in sport is "Keep it simple, Stupid".
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