The assistant referees’ activity in refereeing elite football: Preoccupations when not judging offside

Self-efficacy, mental models and team adaptation: A first approach on football and futsal refereeing

“…For instance, Boyer et al (2015) enhanced the importance of good communication and coordination for football refereeing teams to perform better and suggested that mental models should be studied in the context of handball refereeing. Recently, Boyer et al (2020) showed that assistant referees adjust their decision making according to the main referee decision' process. Finally, Mascarenhas, Collins, Mortimer, and Morris (2005) showed that shared mental model training improved the performance of rugby referees.…”

“…While research has considered the factors that shape individual referee performance (Aragão e Pina, Passos, Carvalho, & Maynard, 2019;MacMahon, Helsen, Starkes, & Weston, 2007;Mathers & Brodie, 2011), there has not been sufficient consideration of the team as a collective, which is intriguing considering, for example, the implementation of the video assistant referees (VAR) (Boyer, MacMahon, Recopé, & Rix-Lièvre, 2020). The increasing number of elements per refereeing team may influence teamwork processes and team performance (Aragão e Pina et al, 2018;Boyer et al, 2020;Dohmen & Sauermann, 2015;LePine, Piccolo, Jackson, Mathieu, & Saul, 2008).…”

“…While research has considered the factors that shape individual referee performance (Aragão e Pina, Passos, Carvalho, & Maynard, 2019;MacMahon, Helsen, Starkes, & Weston, 2007;Mathers & Brodie, 2011), there has not been sufficient consideration of the team as a collective, which is intriguing considering, for example, the implementation of the video assistant referees (VAR) (Boyer, MacMahon, Recopé, & Rix-Lièvre, 2020). The increasing number of elements per refereeing team may influence teamwork processes and team performance (Aragão e Pina et al, 2018;Boyer et al, 2020;Dohmen & Sauermann, 2015;LePine, Piccolo, Jackson, Mathieu, & Saul, 2008). Likewise, given the fact that refereeing is highly demanding and takes place within dynamic contexts, the refereeing team's performance depends on several factors such as the individual and team's ability to adapt (Araújo, Davids, & Hristovski, 2006;Burke, Stagl, Salas, Pierce, & Kendall, 2006;Marques-Quinteiro, Ramos-Villagrasa, Passos, & Curral, 2015;Maynard, Kennedy, & Sommer, 2015).…”

“…Likewise, given the fact that refereeing is highly demanding and takes place within dynamic contexts, the refereeing team's performance depends on several factors such as the individual and team's ability to adapt (Araújo, Davids, & Hristovski, 2006;Burke, Stagl, Salas, Pierce, & Kendall, 2006;Marques-Quinteiro, Ramos-Villagrasa, Passos, & Curral, 2015;Maynard, Kennedy, & Sommer, 2015). For instance, the assistant referee decision may be influenced by his preoccupation about the main referee decision-making process (Boyer et al, 2020).…”

“…Football and futsal referees need to adapt to several constraints such as the type of the competition (e.g., world cup, international game, national game), the importance of the game (e.g., clubs' participants, broadcasting), the stadiums where the game takes place (e.g., type of the pitch, fans reputation, number of spectators), the composition of the refereeing team, since it is not always a fixed team (e.g., number of individuals, reputation, experience, nationality, personality), the game itself (e.g., pace, teams' changing tactics caused by the score of the game, players' reaction), the weather conditions, the adequate functioning of the VAR or the audio communicating system, just to cite a few common examples (see Boyer et al, 2020;Diotaiuti, Falese, Mancone, & Purromuto, 2017;Myers, Feltz, Guillén, & Dithurbide, 2012;Unkelbach & Memmert, 2008). However, we know very little about what shapes a referee team's ability to adapt within the context of football and futsala gap we address in the current study.…”