Physical and perceptual-cognitive demands of top-class refereeing in association football

Abstract

The aim of this study was to examine the physical and perceptual-cognitive demands imposed on UEFA top-class referees and assistant referees during the final round of the Euro 2000 Championship. To investigate the physical workload, the heart rates during matches were monitored by short-range radio telemetry and translated to different workloads expressed as a percentage of maximal heart rate. For measurement of the perceptual-cognitive workload, video-recordings of games were used to obtain the average number of observable decisions taken by a referee. On average, referees and assistant referees performed the matches at 85±5% and 77±7% of their maximal heart rate, respectively. Over the 31 games, the mean number of observable decisions was 137 (range 104–162), 64% of which were based on communication with the assistant referees and/or the fourth official. To optimize the physical preparation of top-class match officials, the results of this study support the application of intensive and intermittent training sessions, which should place priority on high-intensity aerobic stimuli. In addition, video training is discussed as an additional method for improving match officials' decision making.

Keywords:

• decision-making skills
• heart rate
• refereeing

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the members of the UEFA referees' committee for their support in this project. The cooperation of the Euro 2000 match officials is gratefully acknowledged. We are also grateful to Bert De Bruyn and Tim Vanmarcke for assistance with data reduction. Finally, we wish to thank Matthew Weston and Carlo Castagna for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript.