Does height matter in football? Yes, but not in the way you might think

Conventional wisdom has it that being tall is advantageous. The problem with conventional wisdom is that it’s often wrong.

There are studies that correlate height with happiness and higher salaries, admittedly at the cost of shorter lifespans.

In certain sports, elite athletes are almost exclusively big, such as basketball, rowing (except the cox) and volleyball (except the libero). Successful Olympic swimmers have become bigger and heavier in recent decades.

Sports, their rules and their methods of scoring and movement select ideal body types. In gymnastics, horse riding and marathon running, athletes are much smaller.

Physiological specifics beyond rudimentary height measurements — such as the importance of wingspan in swimming and leg length in marathon running — impact and predict performance.

In football, height has always mattered, to a degree. It was historically a limiting factor for technically good but physically underdeveloped English academy players.

However, the first 59 winners of the men’s Ballon d’Or (up to 2016) had an average height of 5ft 10in (178cm), about the average height of a U.S. male. Lionel Messi, at 5ft 7in, has won the award, which recognises the world’s best footballer, more than any other male (eight times). He had to be medicated in his childhood for a growth hormone deficiency.

Longitudinally assessing height within football, for performance benefits, is complex, since humans generally have grown taller in recent decades due to improvements in health, nutrition and medicine.

A 2019 paper from the University of Wolverhampton found a significant and linear increase in player height in England’s top division between 1973 and 2013 — a 1.23cm rise every decade. Notably, it had no correlation with team performance.

Recent title-winning teams are some of the shortest in the contemporary game. Last season’s champions in the top five European leagues rank below their league’s average height. It reflects their balanced squads, even with a mix of teams playing back fives (Inter Milan, Bayer Leverkusen) and back fours (Manchester City, Paris Saint-Germain, Real Madrid).

Better teams are more balanced in all aspects — height included. They have a mix of smaller, more technical players that allow them to control games and keep possession, as well as bigger players for duels and to win matches in both boxes.

That is particularly true of Leverkusen and Inter, with the Bundesliga and Serie A the two tallest leagues in the world.

In Germany, that largely owes to weaker teams being promoted from the second tier, who compensate for technical/tactical inferiority through low blocks and defence-first styles that require height and physicality.

That has a domino effect in demanding more target-man striker profiles for counter-attacks and long balls — even as an 18-team league, the past two seasons have seen more minutes for forwards who are at least 6ft 1in in the Bundesliga than in the Premier League, La Liga or Serie A.

The frequency of back threes partially explains Serie A players being tall, but there has long been a focus on set-piece coaching and recent title winners (Inter under Antonio Conte, AC Milan under Stefano Piolo) have won the league with physical and high-line approaches. Serie A is the division that gives the fewest minutes to defenders under 5ft 8in and the most to defenders over 6ft 1in.

Its minutes for tall players have gone up but La Liga is still the home for small(er) players. Spain is synonymous with tiki-taka and possession football. Importantly, La Liga also has a higher proportion of domestic players than Europe’s other major leagues.

Most successful Spanish teams have a style rooted in the country’s identity and therefore need height in fewer positions. Of Europe’s major four leagues, La Liga gives the most minutes to goalkeepers under 6ft 1in and defenders and forwards under 5ft 8in.

Logically, height should beget height, especially in central positions — it will never not be crucial for goalkeepers and centre-backs. However, research from StatsBomb led them to create a ‘HOPS’ metric for quantifying aerial performance, relative to height.

They found that height only accounted for 22 per cent of variation in ‘HOPS’ scores, and each extra centimetre of height improved aerial ability by just 0.7 per cent. Buying big guys doesn’t guarantee aerial success.

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Short centre-backs: How much does size matter in the Premier League?

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Football is becoming more extreme. Across Europe’s top-four divisions, minutes for players 5ft 8in to 6ft have trended downwards since 2019-20. Head coaches use the smallest (5ft 7in and under) and tallest (6ft 1in and over) players more and more.

The Eurocentric rise of possession and positional play, and the subsequent emphasis on high and man-to-man pressing, means agile technicians are needed just as much as “proper defenders”.

That was a phrase from Manchester City head coach Pep Guardiola, who was referencing the necessity for speed, size and physicality against dribbling wingers. Last season, Guardiola said that if Rico Lewis (5ft 7in) “was a little bit taller, he’d be considered one of the best players in the league”.

Lewis, a small playmaker who operates as a hybrid full-back and midfielder, is a profile that City used in abundance in Guardiola’s early seasons in Manchester. For four consecutive seasons between 2018-19 and 2022-23, though, Guardiola gave increasingly fewer minutes to players under 5ft 8in and more to ones 6ft 1in and taller.

That peaked in 2022-23, Erling Haaland’s (6ft 4in) first season, and cemented a move away from the false-nine system to one with a fixed striker. At times, Guardiola has fielded a back-four of centre-backs, with Rodri (6ft 3in) as their first-choice defensive midfielder.

The decline of the small midfielder has been a league-wide trend in the Premier League in the last four years. Minutes played by 5ft 7in or smaller midfielders have dropped by 28 per cent from 2019-20 compared to 2023-24. After three years in a row of the Premier League being the top league for small midfielders, the last two seasons have seen them find the most minutes in La Liga.

Guardiola has found a balance with City. Last season, the taller trend stopped, City’s minutes to smaller players went up and taller players back down. His attacking midfielders, for instance, will always be positions taken by the best technicians, such as Phil Foden (5ft 7in) and Bernardo Silva (5ft 8in).

Arsenal are on the same growing curve that City were on. In their most recent Premier League game away to Bournemouth, nine of Arsenal’s starting XI were 6ft or taller — though, ironically, in David Raya (6ft), Arsenal have one of the Premier League’s smallest goalkeepers.

In each season under Mikel Arteta, Arsenal have given more minutes to players who are 6ft 1in-plus and in 2023-24, they accounted for almost half of their minutes played.

“The height is really important on set plays,” Arteta said in February. Their set-piece success, from corners in particular, has become such a cornerstone of their attack that Arsenal are buying bigger players and relying increasingly on corners and free kicks.

GO DEEPER

Short centre-backs: How much does size matter in the Premier League?

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An under-discussed aspect of height is its impact on refereeing decisions. Academics have identified a ‘Napoleon complex’: referees give out fouls and bookings more regularly when players are bigger than them.

A study of the German Bundesliga between 2014-15 and 2021-22 found increased likelihoods of 9.4 and 7.2 per cent for fouls called and bookings given when players were taller than referees.

Football is not like rugby, where referees are analysed and their tendencies considered when constructing game plans, though it feels ripe as a possible ‘marginal gain’ for teams to factor height and differences in — particularly in the VAR era, with its extra scrutiny.

The height factor could be correlated to Arsenal’s league-high 18 red cards since Arteta’s arrival in December 2019, though they finished second in the fair-play table to City last season.

William Saliba’s sending off against Bournemouth was Arsenal’s 18th red card in the Premier League since Mikel Arteta’s first game as manager on 26 December 2019.

That’s at least five more than any other team in that time. 😬#AFC pic.twitter.com/8fLYOg5QDN

— Opta Analyst (@OptaAnalyst) October 19, 2024

The demand for physicality is still rising. Congested game schedules, multiple competitions, and the intensity of man-for-man pressing means players who can cover ground quickly and repeatedly engage in duels are needed. That tends to suit taller players, or short(er) ones who have exceptional speed, positioning and decision-making.

The same paper from the University of Wolverhampton identified a “J-shape” trend of English footballers’ ‘RPI’ between 2003-04 and 2013-14. RPI, reciprocal ponderal index, is a more robust way of quantifying body types than BMI — it divides height by the cube root of weight. To summarise, across one decade, English footballers got marginally taller but much slimmer and more angular.

Football, like all sports, is artificially selecting its ideal body type(s). In 2024, it’s a sport that suits tall players, especially with the value placed on set pieces, but the best teams will always benefit from small technicians and athletes with physical prowess, whatever their size.

(Header design: Eamonn Dalton; Photos: Getty Images)