Impact of official matches on soccer referees’ horizontal-jump performance

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study was to quantify the acute impact of soccer match officiating on the bilateral and unilateral horizontal-jump (HJ) performance of field referees (FR) and assistant referees (AR). Thirty-six match officials were evaluated during 12 official soccer matches in a Spanish National Division. Participants were classified as FR (n = 12) and as AR (n = 24). Before (pre-match), at half-time (rest-match) and immediately after the matches (post-match), match officials performed 2 HJs with 2 legs and 2 jumps with right leg (HJright) and left leg (HJleft). HJ performance was significantly decreased from pre- to rest-match and from pre- to post-match (P = 0.001–0.02; effect size (ES) = 0.26–0.45, small), both in FR and AR. It was found that there was a very large association (0.72; ± 0.09, P < 0.01, most likely) between the distance covered at high-intensity decelerations (<–2.5m · s²) and the decrement in HJ capacity from the rest period to post-match in FR. Soccer refereeing might induce match-related fatigue in the muscles involved in the horizontal axis.

KEYWORDS:

• Match officials
• effect
• competition
• power
• jumping

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank both the field and assistant referees from the Navarre Committee of Football Referees and the collaboration of their president and technical director.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Basque Government under a doctoral Grant number reference PRE_2014_2_54.