ArticlePloS one2017
Evaluating erroneous offside calls in soccer.
Article in PloS one, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Penalty kick or not? Differences in the interpretation of handball incidents in professional association football.PloS one · 2026Article
- Let Them Be the Judge of That: Bias Cascade in Elite Dressage Judging.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2023Article
- Influence of physical fitness on decision-making of soccer referees throughout the match.Heliyon · 2023Article
- Match Analysis of Soccer Refereeing Using Spatiotemporal Data: A Case Study.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Downtrends in Offside Offenses Among 'The Big Five' European Football Leagues.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- A Preliminary Analysis of the Importance of Distance, Angle, and Insight When Soccer Referees Make Penalty Decisions.Frontiers in sports and active living · 2020Article
- Decrease in Attentional Performance After Repeated Bouts of High Intensity Exercise in Association-Football Referees and Assistant Referees.Frontiers in psychology · 2019Article
- Color Perception and Attentional Load in Dynamic, Time-Constrained Environments.Frontiers in psychology · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The ability to simultaneously attend to multiple objects declines with increases in the visual angle separating distant objects. We explored whether these laboratory-measured limits on visual attentional spread generalize to a real life context: offside calls by soccer assistant referees. We coded all offside calls from a full year of first division German soccer matches. By determining the x-y coordinates of the relevant players and assistant referee on the soccer field we were able to calculate how far assistant referees had to spread their visual attention to perform well. Counterintuitively, assistant referees made fewer errors when they were farther away from the action due to an advantageous (smaller) visual angle on the game action. The pattern held even when we accounted for individual differences in a laboratory-based attentional spread measure of ten of the assistant referees. Our finding that errors are linked to smaller visual angles may explain the complaints of fans in some situations: Those seated directly behind the assistant referee, further from the players, might actually have it easier to make the right call because the relevant players would form a smaller visual angle.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.