فیزیولوژی ورزشی و دیدگاه تغذیه ای مربی فوتبال Exercise physiology and nutritional perspectives of elite soccer refereeing

Introduction Soccer (European “football”) is one of the most popular sports worldwide. The official Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) survey “Big count 2006” documented 207 member associations and 265 million people involved in this sport. The increasing number of active players, representing a 21 % and 54 % increase in registered male and female players respectively, from 2000 to 2006, further emphasizes the popularity and economic importance of national and international soccer championships 1 . Match officials are an indispensable and inseparable part of soccer, independently of competition level or age classes. According to the laws of the game, a field referee (FR), two assistant referees (AR), and a fourth official are mandatory to control official matches 2 . In 2006, there were 840,000 registered referees, of which 10 % were women 1 . From the 1980’s on scientific investigations began to provide background information of match officiating, applying the technical possibilities of the respective time and placing the main focus on the activity profile 3 and the physiological demands 4-6 of mainly male field referees, followed soon by specific studies about assistant referees 7 and finally of female match officials 8 . Castagna, Abt, and D’Ottavio published an extensive scientific review of the activity profile, exercise physiology and testing protocols in soccer refereeing 9 , and an update on the subject, further including medical aspects, has recently been provided 10. With respect to nutritional aspects, Reilly and Gregson, Teixeira et al., Martinez Renon and Collado were among the first to present nutritional considerations based on the characteristics and performance of soccer referees11-13. These nutritional recommendations are mainly adopted from professional soccer barely considering differences and peculiarities regarding gender, age, anthropometry, training habits and exercise capacity of referees. In this multi-disciplinary narrative review, we intend to present a somewhat atypical mixture of previously published data and actual measurement values collected in course of the precompetition medical and physical assessment of top-class referees in preparation for the FIFA world cups. The first part of this review will address the physical demands of soccer refereeing, referees physiological and anthropometrical characteristics. Where data are available, differences between male and female, field and assistant referees are presented, and a comparison with professional soccer players is drawn. In the second part, nutritional aspects and recommendation paucities will be discussed on the basis of the limited scientific literature and on data of the FIFA referees’ world cup selection in 2012/13 (used with permission of FIFA Medical Assessment and Research Centre, F-MARC).