Information about a piece of news titled Are the referees doing their job in high-risk situations in soccer?
Are the referees doing their job in high-risk situations in soccer?
Intoduction
The decisions made by Norwegian elite referees in injury situations were in accordance with the Laws of the Game, according to a new study from the Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center published in January 2004 by the American Journal of Sports Medicine.
The decisions made by Norwegian elite referees in injury situations were in accordance with the Laws of the Game.
The Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center conducted a study in the Norwegian professional soccer league. The aims of the study were, to evaluate how violations of the laws of the game contributes to injury in soccer and to investigate whether the decisions made by the referees were correct according to the laws of the game of soccer in situations with a high risk of injury. Videotapes and injury information were collected for 174 of 182 matches from male Norwegian professional league during 2000 season.
All situations where the match was interrupted by the referee, one or more players laid down on the pitch for more than 15 s, and the player(s) appeared to be in pain or received medical treatment, were noted as an incident. An injury was recorded if the player was unable to participate in training or match play for at least one day following the incident. Three Norwegian FIFA referees performed retrospective blinded evaluation of the videotapes of the incidents.
During the 174 matches (256 hours of soccer) available for video analysis, 406 incidents were recorded and analyzed regarding the decision made by the referee. Of these, 52 incidents resulted in time-loss injuries. Nearly all incidents and injuries resulted from player-to-player contactabout 70% were either tackling or heading duels. In 58% of the high-risk incidents for injury and 68% of the situations leading to injury, no free kick was awarded. About one in ten of these situations led to either a yellow or a red card. The agreement between decisions made by the match referee and the expert referee panel was good, i.e. their decisions agreed in 85% of the situations where injury occurred. The match referee was neither too lenient nor too strict in his rule interpretation.
No free kick was given in about two-thirds of the injuries and incidents with a high risk of injury. Only 54 yellow and 2 red cards were handed out in injury-risk situations. However, the decisions made by the Norwegian elite referees in high risk duels were in accordance with the laws of the game. In other words, it appears that the rules of the game of soccer are not primarily created to protect the players from situations with a high risk of injury. In contrast, a total of 468 yellow and 24 red cards were handed out in other situations. Hence, only 10% of the yellow and red cards were handed out because of injury-related situations.
These results indicate that there is a need for more detailed information about the causes of specific types of soccer injuries, such as knee, ankle and head injuries to protect players from dangerous play. Based on such information it could be possible to improve the Laws of the Game to protect players from specific playing actions with a high risk of injury. The referees require education about specific playing situations, primarily duels, with an increased risk of injury.
The primary investigator of this study was PhD student Thor Einar Andersen MD in cooperation with PhD student Albin Tenga MSc, professor Lars Engebretsen and professor Roald Bahr.