Mathematician Martin Weigel of the Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland along with colleagues from the University of Leipzig, Germany examined the results in the German mens' and womens' premier football leagues and previous World Cup tournaments.

They found that high scoring games happened more often than would be expected if teams' final scores were randomly distributed.

They said that teams simply did not score a number of goals proportional to their skills, but were rather spurred on by what has been termed as self-affirmation to net more goals.

"Each time a team scores, it generally increases the probability of scoring during the rest of the game," said Weigel.

For their study, Weigel and his colleagues designed a mathematical model, which showed a team's chances of scoring, multiplied for every goal. Results revealed that the effect was more profound in lower quality leagues that in games involving the super powers of the soccer world.

"In the World Cup finals, teams are more evenly matched and therefore less likely to gain a psychological upper hand. That might explain why the highest-scoring contest ever seen in the final stages of the tournament was Austria's 7-5 victory over Switzerland in 1954, whereas in the qualifying stages, Australia hammered hapless American Samoa 31-0 in the run-up to the 2002 tournament," Weigel added.

This was also the reason why the East German league, before unification in 1990, witnessed more outlandishly high scores than the more professional West German Bundesliga, Wiegel further said.

Tim Rees, a sports psychologist at the University of Exeter, UK said that footballers should prepare to cope with the mentally draining effects of conceding a goal if they want to avoid being the victims of a goal rush.

"When teams are doing well they become more confident. But what if you go 1-0 down in the first five minutes? By all means prepare for success, but you also have to get teams to prepare for when things go wrong," Nature quoted Rees as saying.

"The important thing is just to have a firm plan B. Typically, players should spend the five minutes immediately after conceding a goal concentrating on staying relaxed and focused on their style of play. The idea is not to panic and run around like headless chickens," Rees added. (ANI)