Offside decision making of assistant referees in the English Premier League: Impact of physical and perceptual-cognitive factors on match performance

Abstract

In the present study, we investigated the accuracy of offside judgements of assistant referees in the English Premier League. The moment in the match, the position and movement speed of the assistant referee, attacker and second-last defender, together with the angle of view for the assistant referee were all considered to underlie incorrect decisions. The error rate was 17.5% (868 of 4960 situations). As the English assistant referees tended not to signal in doubtful situations (c = 0.91), there was an overall bias towards non-flag errors (773 non-flag errors vs. 95 flag errors). The flash-lag hypothesis could explain all flag errors, whereas the optical-error hypothesis could explain a proportion of the non-flag errors (45.4%). Fatigue, movement speed, and angle of view did not have a detrimental effect on offside decision making. In conclusion, there were fewer flag errors than in the 2002 and 2006 FIFA World Cups, whereas the number of non-flag errors rose. The increased awareness of factors involved in offside decision making and the instructions to give the benefit of the doubt to attackers could have contributed to this situation.

Effect of positioning on the accuracy of decision making of association football top-class referees and assistant referees during competitive matches

“…While Helsen et al (2006) and Catteeuw et al (2010b) reported frequencies of 0.5 and 4 non-flag decisions per match, respectively, Catteeuw et al, (2010a) and Oudejans et al (2005) elevated these situations to 24 and 49 per game, respectively. Following recent studies (Catteeuw et al, 2010a) we considered offside situations when the attacking player was 2 m or less from the offside line.…”

“…The main responsibility of officials is to guarantee the respect of the Laws of the Game and, in particular, Catteeuw, Helsen, Gilis, and Wagemans (2009a) showed role specificity for assessing foul play incidents by referees and for offside decision making by assistant referees. Therefore, an increasing interest has been placed in recent years on the decision making skills of officials during real match play (Catteeuw et al, 2010a(Catteeuw et al, , 2010bHelsen et al, 2006;Oudejans et al, 2005;van Quaquebeke & Giessner, 2010).…”

“…Following the criterion proposed by Catteeuw et al (2010a) we excluded from the analysis all the potential offside situations where the attacker was more than 2 m away from the second-last defender. The final number of offside situations examined was 165.…”

“…In addition to being close to the offside line, the assistant referees need to adopt a critical angle of view from the play to judge the possible offside situations of the attackers at the moment the ball touches or is played by one of their teammates. Catteeuw et al (2010a) calculated the viewing angle of the assistant referee from the passer to the secondlast defender. However, this criterion may have led to underestimations during offside situations, as the positions of the attacking players are also needed to be perceived by assistant referees.…”

Comportamiento visual de árbitros de futbol en situaciones de fuera de juego / Referees' Visual Behaviour During Offside Situations In Football. pp. 325-338

“…Entre las variables de análisis destacan la experiencia de arbitraje (Catteeuw, Helsen, Gilis, & Wagemans, 2009a;Catteeuw et al, 2009b;Catteeuw et al, 2009;Gilis et al, 2009), el rol posicional ocupado en el terreno de juego (Catteeuw et al, 2009a;Catteeuw et al, 2010;Catteeuw, Gilis, Wagemans, & Helsen, 2010a;Helsen et al, 2006), situación de medición , distancia (Button, 2006), ángulo de visionado (Catteeuw et al, 2010a) con que se percibe la acción de fuera de juego por parte del asistente o árbitro, posición del asistente justo en el momento del fuera de juego (Catteeuw et al, 2010;Helsen et al, 2006;Oudejans et al, 2005), e incluso momento temporal del partido en que se produce dicha acción de juego (Button, 2006;Helsen et al, 2006).…”