Scientists have discovered how slow-motion replays influence football referees
MOSCOW, 11 Jun — RIA Novosti. The introduction of slow-motion replays at football matches have made judges more severe — when they are viewed they punish players more severely in comparison with the usual video recording, say scientists in an article published in the journal Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications.
“We were the first who managed to learn how slow repetitions affect the behavior of arbitrators. This is particularly important in the context of the fact that the Russian world Cup will be the first time to work videocode, about the usefulness or uselessness of which is now so hot I bet all sorts of different people,” said Joachim Spitz (Spitz Jochim), biomedic from the University of Leuven (Belgium).
Football today remains one of the most conservative sports on Earth. Unlike hockey, volleyball, basketball and practically all other team sports where video replays are used by judges for decades, FIFA officials, and many judges, and even the players believe that football is no place for them.
Their argument can be reduced to two things — the replays slow the game down and deprive football of the element of artistry and ability to play on the edge, but also undermined the authority of the arbitrators.
On the other hand, supporters of the systems of video retort these statements by the fact that judicial mistakes, for example, the “hand of God” Diego Maradona, often decide the outcome of games.
A Prime example of this, if we take the recent world Championships, is the match England — Germany at the 2010 world Cup, during which the Uruguayan referee did not see the goals Frank Lampard that, as did the British themselves, was the main reason for their defeat. Four years before this, the referee mistakenly awarded a penalty in gate of Australia, allowing the Italian team went on and won the championship for the fourth time in its history.
These scandals, and the constant criticism forced the new leadership of FIFA to create a system of “videoga”, to allow the use of video systems in some European Championships, and then to promise to introduce him to the new world Cup, which starts in Russia this week.
Spitz and his colleagues tried to find out how this innovation will affect the behavior of judges, getting a group of 88 elite referees, whom they invited to watch and evaluate six dozen heavy gaming moments.
Part of the judges, as the researchers note, watched these videos like this in which they saw these moments with my own eyes. In other words, the video has not been slowed down and was shown from the angle that they would be watching the referee. The rest of the participants had seen these dangerous or controversial points in the form that will be available to videoadam for the 2018 world Cup.
These experiments led to interesting but controversial results. First, the scientists have not detected significant differences in the correctness of the decisions — the judges were wrong in 39% of cases with “normal” repetitions and in 37% of cases when slowing down video.
On the other hand, has changed the style of their work — actually all the judges from the second group worked much harder than their colleagues, giving out more red cards. As suggested by Spitz and his colleagues, this was due not only to the fact that slowing the video helped them better to address the situation and find the offender, but also with a number of emotional and psychological factors.
“Our observations show that the delayed picture makes judges more likely to believe that the player broke the rules or caused the injury on purpose, with the result that they begin to give more red and yellow cards. All of this should be taken into account in the creation and introduction of video judging,” says Spitz.