Why Arsenal's celebrations provide an unbiased predictor of success
Rees Nelson’s 97th minute winner against Bournemouth kickstarted extraordinary scenes at the Emirates. Nick Miller provides an in-depth look at how it all unfolded – but you know something big has happened when everyone starts running different directions.
Of course, there are miserable buggers who vent that the reaction was over-the-top for what can probably still be classified as a midseason clash. And perhaps I agree, just look at how forlorn those Bournemouth players are – it’s like they have already been relegated!
But beyond the ensuing FA investigation – does this celebration have any implication? Cutting through the bitterness of social media armchair experts and the self-absorbed guff spouted by Mancunians in the punditry box – does Arsenal’s squad-wide celebration tell us anything about their psychology and chances of success.
Something very noticeable about Arsenal’s celebration – and the same is true for their stoppage time winner against Aston Villa a fortnight ago – is the team-centricity. In the words of Nick Miller…
Then, the mobbing. Oh so much mobbing. It takes a few seconds for everyone to catch up with Nelson, but when they do he disappears into a vibrating mass of humanity. He’s in there somewhere, and the other way you can tell something amazing has happened is how many of the limbs covering him are clad in club-branded coats and training jackets…
This is in contrast to more player-centric celebrations – not uncommon in big moments: think Tardelli’s winner in 1982, Gascoigne’s dentist chair at Euro ’96, and Henry’s iconic knee slide (and replications). However, Nelson just kind of saunters back towards the halfway line before being set upon by players, substitutes, and backroom staff.
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? Well, football has what economists would call a free-rider problem. Player actions are evaluated separately and rewarded differentially. Winning a game requires effort by individuals at a personal cost (e.g., physical exertion or risk of injury), but much of this collective effort goes unrewarded at an individual level. Even when collective effort results in a goal – the individual goal-scorer receives most of the credit.
Players, therefore, often face a decision between acting in a way that enhances their chances of scoring (private good) or passing the ball to someone else (contributing to a public good) – this can incentivise selfish behaviour, damaging team cohesion and impacting success.
There is strong replicated evidence that cohesive sport teams – that is teams made up of team-orientated players – achieve better outcomes. And this is particularly true for Football, which has been characterised within the academic literature as having interactive dependence.
Now, if you haven’t given up already – you may be asking what the hell constitutes a cohesive team of team-orientated players. And you would be right. Team cohesion has most commonly been assessed with the self-reported Group Environment Questionnaire (GEQ): a survey measuring players’ beliefs and perceptions about their team. So far, so flaky…
Self-report surveys are accompanied by a host of validity problems that limit the extent to which they reflect actual behaviour. A better, less biased measurement of team cohesion was needed to investigate its relationship with performance.
This was when researchers turned to Post-Scoring Behaviour (PSB): rating celebrations from Selfish to Team-orientated based on three criteria:
1) Direction of attention
2) Running location
3) Physical contact with teammates
Crucially, (after some quite dubious research practices) team-orientated celebrations were found to positively predict a team’s position at the end of the season. In other words, teams with more team-orientated goal celebrations finished higher in the league.
The relationship between team-centric celebration and success has been replicated in basketball, where early season physical touch predicts team performance later in the season, and lab-based studies have suggested that the effect is mediated by Group Emotional Contagion.
Of course, field studies examining football are correlational, and there is no conclusive evidence on the direction of causality: do celebrations become more team-orientated because of success, or do teams become more successful because of their team-orientated celebrations.
Either way, it seems team-orientated celebration predicts season success – and if you are so inclined to read anything into the nature of Arsenal’s wild celebrations – it should only be that this is a sign of champions…
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