Background and Purpose

Football refereeing is a discipline that is booming in the world and requires better physical skills. These skills require prior preparation. What does the scientific literature say about this ?

Relevance:

Review the literature on the physical preparation of football referees.

Methods:

This is a literature review of articles on the physical preparation of football referees from 2006 to 2016, which is ten years. The keywords used were: 1- in English football referees; soccer referee; physical training; physical condition; endurance; training of football referees; training of soccer referees; football referees injuries and physical training, 2- in French: arbitre de football ; préparation physique des arbitres de football ; entraînement des arbitres de football.

These research equations have been introduced into the target databases (in English or French). All databases explored are: Pubmed, British Journal of Sports Medicine (BJSM), American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), Elsevier Masson Science Direct; Perf Arbitration; Exercises and Sport Sciences Reviews; UEFA; KU Leuven; Annals of Scientific Physiotherapy; FIFA.com

Analysis:

At first, the articles of interest were selected just after reading the titles while taking care to remove the duplicates. After reading the abstracts, the most relevant articles on the research topic were kept. Thirdly, the preserved articles were read and their scientific quality evaluated according to the criteria of the PEDro scale or the score ≥ to 7/11 having been fixed for an article to be retained and according to PICOS standards (Populations, Interventions, Comparisons, Outcomes and Study Design). Selected articles were extracted parameters such as: the number of participating referees; middle age ; the average weight; average size; number of years of experience of these referees; the proposed protocols for referee training and their results; the presence or absence of warm-up before the training session; cardiorespiratory measures; the difference between central referees and assistant referees. Finally, articles were submitted to the GRADE working group system to determine their level of recommendation.

Results:

Four hundred and forty-three (443) articles were obtained from the different databases; after applying the various filters, nine (9) scored PEDro ≥ 7/11; six (6) articles are retained according to the PICOS standard; the three (3) rejected lacked comparison. All of 9 articles have specified the number of participating referees, their age, and the proposed training protocols. However, this protocol differs from one study to another and concerns: aerobic and performance conditions, training intensity, acceleration-speed, sprint repetition capacity and agility during these sprints, endurance and finally, perceptivo-cognitive requirements. Parameters such as the average weight and average size of the participating referees as well as their number of years of experience were only specified in 8, 6 and 5 articles out of 9 respectively. Similarly, the cardiorespiratory parameters for which HR max and VO2 max were evaluated in only 5 and 3 studies out of 9 respectively. Finally, the nine articles are all of low quality and low recommendation according to the GRADE working group criteria

Conclusion

The literature is poor as regards the physical preparation of the football referee. Articles studied have used various referee physical training protocols and are of low scientific quality and low recommendation.

Keywords: Football referees; a physical training; training