Women's soccer teams have been ditching white shorts as part of a growing trend aimed at tackling period anxiety in sport, and new research shows that women's teams who play in white perform worse.

Alex Krumer, a sports economist and professor at Molde University College in Norway, studied the results of World Cups and European Championships between 2002 and 2023, and found women's teams wearing white shorts averaged 1.27 points per game compared to 1.57 points by teams in dark colours. Men's teams in white shorts showed no drop in performance.