Considerations and best practices for elite football officials return to play after COVID-19 confinement

ABSTRACT

The recent COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a total lockdown of the major football leagues, aiming to prevent the threat of an uncontrolled spread of infections, and forcing the players and match officials to home-based physical training. Differently from players, no health and physical fitness maintenance guidelines were published for match officials. Before the return to structured conditioning and officiating, match officials must perform a medical assessment, as well as systematic COVID-19 testing and detailed pulmonary function evaluation. The hygienic-sanitary prevention strategies for virus transmission must be strictly followed. In the remaining part of the present season, alterations of the game rules, namely halves of 30-40 min and no allowance for lost time, aiming to reduce the match officials physiological load may result as a safer option. Nonetheless, match officials' cognitive and physical demands, will probably be exacerbated by the increased number of substitutions per game, proposed to reduce players' match load. The proposed match scenario further stresses the importance of well-developed aerobic and anaerobic fitness in elite level match officials. Therefore, the aim of this paper was to guide a safe and successful return to play for match officials.

KEYWORDS:

• Soccer
• aerobic fitness
• referees
• assistant referees
• training load

Acknowledgements

The information provided with this study do not constitute endorsement of the authors' institutions. Carlo Castagna devised and coordinated the making of the paper. The co-authors provided their written expertise according to their area of knowledge. CC, MB, AL and SP edited and commented on the final version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.