A study has found that taller footballers are more likely to be given a red or yellow card by referees.

Dr Niels van Quaquebeke and Dr Steffen Giessner from the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University studied 123,844 fouls. They found that it was nearly always the taller playing who was blamed for the foul.

The scientists say that this is because it is human instinct to be more scared and wary of people who are taller than you: “'Humans throughout evolution needed to be more afraid of bigger animals because bigger animals usually have more potential to harm us,” says scientist Dr Van Quaquebeke.

This might mean that short players like Jermain Defoe who is only 5’7 have more of an advantage than tall player like Peter Crouch who is 6’7.

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