eli5, apart from the psychological factor and weather, how does playing at home stadium affect a football game as compared to a sport where attributes of the home stadium affect the game in a much more nuanced manner like cricket ?
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Depends on the type of football.
For football as known by most of the world, it’s mostly psychology, but even small things like knowing where the goal is based on contextual clues in the stadium – just being used to how far everything is and what that means for remaining distance – would be helpful when you, for example, have your back to the goal.
For football as known to Americans, the same things apply, but also the quarterback needs to be able to give instructions pre-snap, which the home crowd will try to shout over and mess up. The loudest stadiums tend to be the ones opponents commit the most false starts in, and it’s no coincidence.
If you remove the psychological factor and weather (those are huge advantages). Then your left with the fact the away team had to travel which is mental and physical efforts the home team didn’t have to deal with. For home teams that play and live at altitude, there maybe a physical advantage, but the fact that most plays in football rarely last past 10 seconds, I doubt it’s much.
Not familiar with different cricket stadiums, but in a sport like football it’s imperative that they’re able to communicate effectively on the field. They’re reading formations and adapting on the fly all in a matter of seconds. A stadium, especially the old ones where you’re closer to the field and have a team with rabid fans, can make it near impossible to communicate. With the technology applied in recent years it’s improved.
*sorry should have specified American football.
If you are talking about soccer then the home team has control of the size and condition of the pitch (within limits). Stoke City in the PL were famous for having a particularly narrow pitch with the grass grown longer to optimise the threat from long throws and hinder more technical teams passing.
https://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/stoke-city-britannia-pitch-wenger-1847085.amp
With sports involving travelling long distances like the NFL, time zone differences matter, particularly when traveling to the east. It’s commonly called ‘jet lag’.
Players used to waking up at 9 am in San Francisco who wake up at 9 am in Boston are really waking up at their body’s 6 am.
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