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This study aimed to examine how the home advantage (HA) and home teams’ performances changed in European football leagues (German Bundesliga, Spanish La Liga, English Premier League, Portuguese Primeira Liga and Italian Serie A) with the measures imposed by legal authorities to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic (no audience, five substitutions and “cooling breaks”). The HA (Pollard’s rescaled method) and home performance-related statistics of matches contested before (n = 491) and after (n = 491) the 2019–2020 season break were calculated and compared, for each league and for all five, using the paired t-test or the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Overall, the HA did not significantly decrease in European leagues (from 16.4% to 11.6%; trivial effect size [ES]); however, a one-sample t-test revealed that the HA after the COVID-19 break was significantly greater than 0% (small ES). While the HA completely disappeared in the Bundesliga (large ES), its effects remained stable in La Liga (small ES), Premier League and Primeira Liga (trivial ES), and even increased in Serie A (medium ES) after the return. Home teams’ performances in these leagues were influenced to different extents by the COVID-19 situation, especially by playing behind closed doors. Altogether, significant decreases were observed for total shots, tackles (medium ES), shots on target and pass success (small ES). Therefore, the role of crowd support seems to vary depending on the context characteristics in which football is played. Also, the augmented “information transfer” from coaches to players during COVID-19 matches might have masked the crowd effects on the HA.

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Background. Among many technical and tactical aspects of the behaviour of players, the goals are the most studied. The goal is the key to success for teams and its analysis in all matches of a major football tournament that allows multiple assessments. Methods. The aim of this study was to analyze the influence of the first goal on the final result of the football match, identifying the team that scored the first goal and the final result obtained by this team: winning, drawing or losing, and subsequently, to relate the obtained results to physical, technical, tactical and psychological performance. We analyzed all the matches of the last 5 editions of the 6 major football tournaments (national teams) in the world: FIFA World Cup, UEFA Euro, CONMEBOL America Cup, AFC Asian Cup, CAF Africa Cup of Nations, and FIFA Confederations Cup (n = 996). The data were obtained from the database on the websites of the official federations, through overviews of the official matches. Quantitative data were collected in relation to the time that the goals were scored in the course of the matches. The statistical analysis of the results was conducted using the non parametric chi-square test. Results. According to the results, the team that scored the first goal in these last tournaments presented a high probability of winning (the average of 71.17% in the 6 tournaments). Conclusion. Thus, the high probability of victory in favour of the team that scores the first goal in the match of football is linked to the physical, technical, tactical and mainly the psychological aspects.

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