An Investigation Into The Validity Of The Use Of Centrality As A Criterion For Stacking Studies In Soccer

Following a landmark study (Grusky 1963) into the stacking of black players into the least important positions in baseball, a number of studies have examined this phenomenon in various North American sports (see Curtis and Loy, 1978, for a comprehensive review). In these sports the least important positions were defined as the non-central positions (Grusky, 1963). Recent studies (Maguire, 1988; Melnick, 1988) have applied theories of centrality to soccer, when examining the possibility of stacking taking place in the English Football League.