Decision-Making in Soccer Refereeing: Conceptual and Practical Considerations

Decision-making is a critical aspect of soccer referees’ performance (e.g., Helsen and Bultynck, 2004; MacMahon, Helsen, Starkes, & Weston, 2007). Referees must continuously locate themselves in a position, which enables a quick and correct capture of multiple static and dynamic cues (e.g., ball, players, lines) in a sometimes unexpected arrangement; all for generating reliable and trustful decisions (Lex, Pizzera, Kurtes, & Schack, 2014). At the elite level, referees interact, process, and make decisions under considerable stress (Samuel, 2015, Page & Page, 2010). Research on soccer referees’ decision-making has emphasized the significance of contextual factors, such as the home advantage as manifested by crowd noise (Lovell, Newell, & Parker, 2014), a team’s aggressive reputation (Jones, Paull, & Erskine, 2002), and the match’s playing time (Unkelbach & Memmert, 2008). Furthermore, training of soccer referees’ decision-making is typically conducted using a stationary video clip format (Schweizer, Plessner, Kahlert, & Brand, 2011) or an on-field simulation. Both types of training present shortcomings for training sequential decision-making in a form which simulates real refereeing performance. Therefore, in this presentation we first present a new model of the decision-making process for skilled soccer referees, based on Tenenbaum’s (2003) sequential decision-making framework and the literature pertaining to soccer referees’ decision-making (e.g., Mallo, Gonzalez Frutos, Juàrez, & Navarro, 2012; Mascarenhas, Collins, & Mortimer, 2002; Samuel, 2015; Unkelbach & Memmert, 2008). Then, we present initial data of a new type of simulator, designed to train soccer referees in sequential decision-making. Finally, we provide practical considerations for effectively training decision-making in soccer referees, including the issue of technological aids.