Current Issues in Sport Science 1 (2016) Psychological issues in football officiating: An interview study with top-level referees Urs Schnyder1, * & Ernst-Joachim Hossner1 1 Institute of Sport Science, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland * Corresponding author: Institute of Sport Science, University of Bern, Bremgartenstrasse 145, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland, Tel: +41 31 6315167, Fax: +41 31 6315169 Email: [email protected] ORIGINAL ARTICLE ABSTRACT Article History: The present study aims on the identification of problems in the practice of top-level football referee- Received 15th March 2016 ing. For this purpose, semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data from 23 European Accepted 09th August 2016 elite referees. Through inductive content analysis, seven higher-order themes emerged: (1) descrip- Published 27th September 2016 tive, (2) characteristics of a good elite referee, (3) difficulties in decision-making, (4) pre-match prepa- ration, (5) communication through headset, (6) decision-making, and (7) decision-making training. Handling Editors: On the one hand, the findings underline the practical relevance of existing scientific research; on the Günter Amesberger, other hand, the relevance of some areas of research, for instance, on the role of biases, is questioned University of Salzburg, Austria by the interviewees’ statements. A particular need for further research could be revealed regarding Sabine Würth, the development, optimisation, or evaluation of (1) the pre-match preparation, (2) supporting tech- University of Salzburg, Austria nical devices, (3) innovative training tools for decision-making, (4) the within-team communication, and (5) complementary methods such as mental practice. Editor-in-Chief: Martin Kopp Keywords: University of Innsbruck, Austria association football – expert performance – psychological characteristics – refereeing - team communication – visual perception Reviewers: Markus Raab DSHS Köln, Germany Reviewer 2: anonymous Citation: Schnyder, U., & Hossner, E.-J. (2016). Psychological issues in football officiating: An interview study with top-level referees. Current Issues in Sport Science, 1:004. doi: 10.15203/CISS_2016.004 Introduction cal facets of referees’ performance seems to be a particularly growing field in science on sports refereeing (e.g., MacMahon Officials take a vital role in almost every competition-oriented & Plessner, 2013; MacMahon et al., 2014; Mascarenhas, O’Hare, game sport. Especially in professional sports, referee’s deci- Plessner, & Button, 2006). In this regard, Plessner and MacMa- sions are often controversially discussed by the involved team hon (2013) have identified three main types of officials depend- or by the media. Not least for this reason an interesting area ing on the amount of interaction with athletes and the number of research has emerged over the recent years with respect to of cues they have to consider: Interactors, like football referees, sports officiating (MacMahon & Plessner, 2008). Apart from a have a high interaction level and a lot of cues to process (e.g., considerable number of studies regarding the physiological in rugby: Cunningham, Mellick, Mascarenhas, & Fleming, 2012; condition of officials (e.g., Castagna, Abt, & D’Ottavio, 2007; Mascarenhas, Collins, & Mortimer, 2005; Mellick, Fleming, Bull, Krustrup et al., 2009; Weston, Castagna, Helsen, & Impellizzeri, & Laugharne, 2005; Mellick, Fleming, & Davies, 2007); sport 2009), less research has been conducted on the decision-mak- monitors (e.g., gymnastics judges) have low physical demands ing process itself. Consequently, research on the psychologi- but a large number of cues to monitor (e.g. in gymnastics: Bard, 2016 I innsbruck university press, Innsbruck Current Issues in Sport Science I ISSN 2414-6641 I http://www.ciss-journal.org/ Vol. 1I DOI 10.15203/CISS_2016.004 OPEN ACCESS U. Schnyder & E.-J. Hossner Psychological issues in football officiating Fleury, Carrière, & Hallé, 1980; Plessner & Schallies, 2005); and as information integration. Perception-related research has al- reactors (e.g., line judges in tennis) have low physical demands ready been discussed previously. Concerning the task of cat- and a low number of cues to observe (e.g. in tennis: Whitney, egorisation, Unkelbach and Memmert (2008) revealed that Wurnitsch, Hontiveros, & Louie, 2008). Although parallels can football referees give less yellow cards in the initial phase of a be drawn within the three main types of officials, the require- game as it should be statistically expected. Obviously, referees ments for each referee are different, which leads to the scien- first need to get a feel for the game before they are ready to im- tific interest to identify particular officiating issues in a specific pose hard sanctions. Regarding prior knowledge, Jones, Paull, sports. For this reason, the main focus of the research at hand and Erskine (2002) found an effect of an aggressive reputation has been laid on the reconstruction of particular issues in foot- of a team on the referee’s decision. Furthermore, the memory ball refereeing. From a scientific perspective, football referee- aspect of prior knowledge is underlined by evidence regarding ing has been especially examined with respect to (a) visual per- the specific effects of the colour of players’ shirts (Frank & Gilov- ception, (b) judgement biases, (c) performance enhancement, ich, 1988). Concerning information integration, as information or (d) further aspects of the decision-making process. is often not available to a sufficient degree, referees learn to use (a) Visual perception plays an important role with regard to the additional or alternative cues for their decisions, for instance, quality of decision-making. The head referee takes 137 observ- crowd noise (Dohmen, 2008; Downward & Jones, 2007; Nev- able decisions during a single match, whereof 64 % are based ill, Balmer, & Williams, 2002; Page & Page, 2010; Unkelbach & on communication within the referee team (Helsen & Bultynck, Memmert, 2010). This behaviour might also explain the well- 2004). Regarding basic visual skills that underlie these decisions, established phenomenon of home advantage (Boyko, Boyko, it could be shown that expert football referees outperform & Boyko, 2007; Buraimo, Forrest, & Simmons, 2010; Dawson novices in visual skills such as accommodation (cycles/minute), & Dobson, 2010; Dawson, Dobson, Goddard, & Wilson, 2007; peripheral vision (cm), saccadic eye movements (numbers/ Goumas, 2014; Johnston, 2008; Sutter & Kocher, 2004;). Besides minute), and speed of recognition (number of redrawn geo- those external cues, it could also be shown that referees are in- metric shapes per minute; Ghasemi, Momeni, Jafarzadehpur, fluenced by their own prior decisions leading, for instance, to Rezaee, & Taheri, 2011; Ghasemi, Momeni, Rezaee, & Gholami, compensating tendencies in penalty-kick judgements (Pless- 2009). With respect to gaze behaviour, it could be proven that ner & Betsch, 2001; Schwarz, 2011). expert assistant referees do not use gaze strategies that differ (c) Regarding performance enhancement by means of on-field from those used by near-experts, although they are able to interventions, referee-specific research seems still to be in its in- judge offside situations more accurately (Catteeuw, Helsen, Gi- fancy (MacMahon, Helsen, Starkes, & Weston, 2007). However, lis, Van Roie, & Wagemans, 2009; see also Schnyder, Koedijker, it could be shown so far that motor and perceptual experience Kredel, & Hossner, 2014). Apart from these results, there is an has a positive effect on decision-making on deceptive move- ongoing discussion on whether the positioning of referees and ments in football (Pizzera & Raab, 2012a; Renden, Kerstens, assistant referees is crucial for decision-making. In this respect, Oudejans, & Cañal-Bruland, 2014). Furthermore, Pizzera and for the head referee, Mallo, Frutos, Juárez, and Navarro (2012) Raab (2012b) could show that watching games without having were able to demonstrate an optimal distance to the event, to judge them is positively linked to high performance quality. whereas Oliveira, Orbetelli, and Barros Neto (2011) presented Therefore, “soccer referees’ performance may be enhanced by conflicting results. Furthermore, for judging offside, there has watching a great amount of games over many years” (Pizzera & been an intense debate between proponents of the optical- Raab, 2012b, p. 71). For off-field training, it was found that vid- error hypothesis stating that misalignments of the assistant eo training with feedback is very effective for improving offside referee to the offside line lead to systematic errors (Oudejans decisions (Catteeuw, Gilis, Jaspers, Wagemans, & Helsen, 2010; et al., 2000, 2005) and the opposing party whose proponents Catteeuw, Gilis, Wagemans, & Helsen, 2010b; Put, Wagemans, prefer an alternative explanation that is rooted in the so-called Spitz, Williams, & Helsen, 2015) as well as foul decisions (Brand, flash-lag effect and the assumption that the current position of Schweizer, & Plessner, 2009; Schweizer, Plessner, Kahlert, & the players is misperceived due to their current velocity at the Brand, 2011). The fact that those off-field improvements might “flash-like” point in time when the ball is passed to the attacker positively transfer to the on-field situation was demonstrated (Baldo, Ranvaud, & Morya, 2002; Barte & Oudejans, 2012; Cat- by Put, Wagemans, Jaspers, and Helsen (2013). teeuw, Gilis, García-Aranda,