'At the start, I didn't like the technology': VAR and the psychology of officiating
Another article about VAR? Really? Bear with me. It’s a subject that has seemingly been talked to death and yet the scope of the discussion rarely strays beyond technology. We argue about the accuracy of hand-drawn lines, the use of pitch-side monitors and even the role of artificial intelligence. We rarely talk about the human impact of what is, when all the shouting is over, a person watching a video.
If you’re not convinced about the effect of VAR on match officials, take a look at the quote below, lifted from ‘Utilising experiential knowledge of elite match officials: Recommendations to improve practice design for football referees’, a study by Stuart Carrington, Jamie North and Abbe Brady:
“At the beginning...when I saw the mistake or I receive information from the VAR that I am wrong, I say ‘shit’, ‘shit’. I said, ‘The technology is better than me and I don’t like it, I don’t like it.’ But, now, it’s very different, because now it’s more a friend.”
It’s important to note that this isn’t the testimony of a referee relatively new to the demands of elite sport. The research is based on interviews with three match officials, who (at the time they were questioned) were officiating in their home nation’s top flight, having accumulated 61 years’ professional experience between them. The individuals in question had overseen World Cup, Champions League and Europa League matches.
The quote provides an indication of the psychological toll exerted by officiating elite football. According to the study’s authors, referees are responsible for making 137 decisions per match. They make critical interventions in games watched by millions of people and played by billion-pound organisations.
Inevitably, psychology plays a crucial part in these decisions. Officials are motivated by the same factors which drive players, such as winning approval from (or escaping the ire of) supporters. ‘Recommendations to improve practice design for football referees’ shows that this affects the amount of stoppage time played, the likelihood of awarding penalties and the frequency with which away teams are penalised.
Crowd pressure is part of an official’s ‘performance environment’, identified by the research as one of five factors affecting referees. For clarity, these are:
Media and social media influence
Societal views
Individual constraints
Performance environment
Governing body environment
The pressure exerted by fans is the most commonly-cited influence on officials, but this doesn’t diminish its impact. As one of the research participants said:
“I think if the referee is giving free-kicks, and the home crowd, if it goes against the home team, will often vocally show their displeasure. Then if there’s another free-kick against the home team it [pressure] builds and build and builds...sooner or later you would think that pressure will build to the point of he’s wanting to show he’s fair minded.”
Not that the interaction between referees and supporters is entirely one way, though. The research confirms a suspicion I imagine many fans will have felt: according to the study participants, officials do use cues from the crowd to aid their decision-making. Interestingly, the paper also touches on VAR’s ability to help ‘sell’ decisions, with one interviewee explaining that “selling the decision is very important: if you sell the decision very well people accept every time.”
Unfortunately, replicating the will exerted by 50,000 fervent fans - as part of referees’ training - is near-impossible. Indeed, the study shows that the impact of an official’s ‘performance environment’ is such that video training - aimed at improving cognitive skills such as awareness - struggles to be translated onto the pitch.
Together with what the study interviewees felt was an emphasis on physical - ahead of psychological - training, this places an onus on individual preparation. As one participant put it:
“We…only have a physical training session. We have schedules for that. But for mental preparation we have…alone preparation…private preparation, because every referee decides with himself if (they) do this type of mental preparation or not. For example, I work many, many hours with this in the past because I think it is very important. When you prepare very well it is very important.”
A greater emphasis on conducting psychological training in groups, as well as extending the scope of pre-match preparation beyond commonly-practiced techniques such as imagery and self-talk, is one of the paper’s key recommendations.
The study also attempts to address the difficulty of replicating a matchday atmosphere in training, suggesting that - however tough it is to stage - officiating skills could be honed in front of a crowd.
If this sounds fanciful, picture a social influence test conducted as part of another study, which placed two professional Spanish referees into one of three rooms: a room with 16 Atletico Madrid supporters, a room with 16 Real Madrid supporters, or a room with no supporters.
The supporters were placed 1m behind the officials while a live broadcast of the 2016 Champions League final between Atletico Madrid and Real Madrid was shown. The referees were asked to decide whether they agreed or disagreed with the on-field decisions within two seconds of the decision being made and their judgments were shown to the fans via a green light if they agreed and a red light if they disagreed.
The outcome? Yes, you’ve guessed it. The referees were less likely to disagree with the on-field decision when watching in the presence of supporters, and, in four key match incidents, the referees’ judgment was influenced by the supporters present, suggesting, as the study says, a ‘home bias’. Perhaps, as we continue to develop a more sophisticated appreciation of what influences an official’s state of mind, it’s an outcome fans might come to understand.