How to be a good REFEREE?

Every week, ref­er­ees make mis­takes that fuel de­bate and analy­sis. Yet, per­haps the most se­ri­ous con­se­quence of their er­rors is to in­ad­ver­tently de­cide the re­sult of a match. Re­duc­ing the amount of er­rors made by ref­er­ees is the aim of a mo­bile app de­vel­oped by An­to­nio Expósito, a com­puter en­gi­neer at Lleida Uni­ver­sity (UdL). The app was de­signed for the world of foot­ball, but can be adapted to other dis­ci­plines, and al­lows ref­er­ees to train their speed of de­ci­sion-mak­ing while en­gaged in phys­i­cal ef­fort. Xavier Estrada, a qual­i­fied ref­eree who ad­ju­di­cates top matches in Spain and abroad, has taken part in the pro­ject.

While the tool is de­signed to help ref­er­ees, it has a very dif­fer­ent focus than VAR, the video sys­tem that al­lows ref­er­ees to re­view hard-to-call sit­u­a­tions that have just taken place on the pitch. Expósito’s app pro­vides the ref­eree with real-life sit­u­a­tions, such as an off­side or a penalty call, while they are in­volved in phys­i­cal ac­tiv­ity, and gives them only a split-sec­ond to make a de­ci­sion. The pro­ject cur­rently has 60 dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions, but the idea is to ex­pand the list. The ReF­eree app does not deal with the­ory or ques­tions on the rules of the game, but aims to pro­vide prac­ti­cal sit­u­a­tions so that ref­er­ees can train their speed of re­sponse, es­pe­cially since the Span­ish Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion (FEF in Span­ish) has raised the bar in its tri­als.

The FEF has raised stan­dards in its de­mands on the phys­i­cal fit­ness of ref­er­ees, and from this sea­son first and sec­ond di­vi­sion ref­er­ees have to pass phys­i­cal tests every four weeks. Also, their per­for­mance in each match is now analysed by an as­ses­sor. The UdL app is de­signed to be a tool “that helps ref­er­ees pre­pare them­selves men­tally and sim­u­lates psy­cho­log­i­cal pres­sure,” says Expósito, who is cur­rently doing a Mas­ter’s in Com­puter En­gi­neer­ing. “There is no app on the mar­ket that sim­u­lates this method of prepa­ra­tion for ref­er­ees in any sport, and par­tic­u­larly not in foot­ball,” he in­sists.

Ref­er­ees will no doubt con­tinue to make mis­takes, but now they have fewer ex­cuses.