As Vujadin Boskov said, “Football is football”. A few years ago, a group of researchers from the universities of Bristol and Oxford decided to check to what extent the beautiful game affects a priori subjects that have nothing to do with the ball as much as an academic career. His conclusion was surprising: if you take an exam like EvAU in a year when only the European Cup is held, you are (statistically) likely to perform less well than in a year without tournaments.

They even gave a significant number: 12%.

Does the European Cup affect the exams? The question may seem strange, but that’s what a group of British researchers asked themselves a few years ago. And not on a vague and abstract level. No, they did this with a scientific approach.

Professor Simon Burgess, from the University of Bristol and Oxford, and colleagues analyzed the GCSE records of nearly 3.5 million students to determine how big events influence international football competitions, such as the World Cup or the European Championship. The results were announced in December 2011, on the eve of Spain winning the European Cup.

What did they discover? This affects football exams. And a lot. “Students sitting GCSE exams during a major football tournament such as the FIFA World Cup or the UEFA European Championship perform worse than in a summer without football,” the University of Bristol summarized in 2011. To be more precise, they found that students who took the exam in years with major summer football events “put in less effort and achieved worse results, on average” than students who took the exam in years without tournaments.

“Time spent watching and talking about football is time not spent studying, so our findings give an indication of how important a student’s effort is for GCSE performance,” warned Professor Robert Metcalfe from Oxford. For their study, they analyzed seven years of CGSE records, which allowed them to analyze a variety of tracks with and without international tournaments.

Can you go into more detail? Yes, researchers indicate in their study the type of students whose performance is most annoyed. The profile is fueled by more or less specific ideas. And others that aren’t so many.

For example, British experts found that the effect largely depends on the student’s interest in football, although there are much more subtle nuances. “Both boys and girls, and students from all social strata, are affected. However, on average, the outcomes of the most disadvantaged boys and students are more affected,” the report states.

How does it affect performance? The 2011 study left some interesting ideas. Probably the most interesting of all is the extent to which distractions in football affect academic performance. Here’s an example from the University of Bristol: “The average impact of specific exams taken during the tournament is about a quarter of the grade per subject. This is equivalent to half the impact of having an effective teacher versus an ineffective one.”

The impact on grades is even greater in the most exposed group of students, according to the profile prepared by the researchers themselves. They appreciated that in these cases the effect was similar to that which might occur depending on whether the student was taught by a “very efficient” teacher or a “very inefficient” teacher.

Can we make this more concrete? The same experts published a report in 2019, years after conducting their first study. Journal of Public Economics Here they improved the shooting even more. Their methods were the same: they analyzed how the World Cup and the European Cup affected the academic achievement of British students at GCSE. Their sample spanned a seven-year period.

Specifically, the researchers examined whether the likelihood of achieving a C grade (a “satisfactory” grade in the British system) or higher in at least five subjects increased or decreased during courses with major tournaments. And the result was again surprising: in Cup or European Cup years this probability dropped by 12%, which again led them to talk about the “negative impact” of major tournaments on academic performance.

Does it affect everyone equally? No. The numbers only reflect probabilities and averages, but they show that for some students the impact is even greater. “For some demographic groups, the impact is even more significant; students are likely to be very interested in football. For them, the chance of reaching this benchmark drops by 28% in tournament years.”

So how to solve it? The study is not satisfied with just giving percentages. Already in his 2011 report, on the eve of a European cup meeting, Burgess had encouraged debate about the “support” schools could offer to facilitate their students’ concentration. And he went even further.

“Then maybe we should try to bring the exams forward three weeks so they don’t coincide with major football tournaments,” he said. “We must recognize the importance of effort in overall performance. There is talk about school resources, number of students per class and family environment, but effort is rarely mentioned in political debates.

Pictures | Save the Dream (Flickr)

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