The Feasibility Study On The FIFA's Proposal To Increase The Restricted Referee

In March 2009, the FIFA(Federation Internationale de Football Association)intended to increase two "restricted referee". Just as the name implies, these two referees, standing at the back of the goal respectively, are responsible for the supervision and judgment on the various situations happened within the penalty area. The purpose of this intention is to improve football referee's accuracy of judgment and reduce the miss-judgment, which is significant to maintain the justice and fairness of judgment. Through analyzing the judgment and evaluation on the major football matches, this paper makes an empirical study on the FIFA's proposal of increasing "restricted referee", hoping that this can broaden the good prospects for the development of football referees and provide implication and helpful lessons to the career of football referees. Meanwhile, this study also hopes to it can lay a foundation for the higher level development of the football match, and can provide a guide for the reform measures of FIFA as well, with certain theoretical and practical significances.Applying the literature review, observational method, mathematical statistics, questionnaire survey and analytics in our study, this paper analyzes the current problems existing in the judgment and makes a statistic analysis on the classical cases of major matches in the Football World Cup, European Cup, the Asian Cup. In addition, the relevant statistics about the penalty area in the elimination match of 2010 World Cup are studied; the reform measures to the FIFA's referees and its pros and cons are also discussed. And in our paper, we make a comparative analysis to the judgment among the current referee, the double referee and the increased restricted referee. At last, the following conclusions are drawn form above analyses:1. The intensity and difficulty of enforcement of the current referees in the competition are the strongest. 2. In the major football tournaments, miss-judgment mostly happened in the penalty area. 3. Miss-judgments affect the results of the competition directly, which can neither guarantee the the justice and fairness of judgment, nor ensure the healthy development of football game and the harmonious, stable development between countries. 4. According to the analysis about the reform measures to the FIFA's referees, we denies the thought that introducing the double referee system and high-tech means affects the conformity and fluency of law enforcement. Therefore, the FIFA's proposal that increase referees in the penalty area is an irresistable trend. 5. The increased referees can help assistant referees to supervise the foul plays in the penalty area, the flopping and deliberate ball-touching with hands, improving the judgment accuracy of penalty kicks and scores, which is useful to keep the principle of fair competition. So, it is feasible to increase the restricted referees in the penalty area. 6. The increased restricted referee is superior to the current referee and double referee, because the restricted referee can assist chief referee to make judgment. The chief referee, linesmen and restricted referee formed a triangular and stable multi-dimensional vision on the offensive and defensive players. The angle and range of observation is largely increased, therefore, the accuracy of judgment is improved too, and the misjudgment reduced relatively.Suggestions: 1. FIFA should support the reform measure of increasing restricted referee. It can be tried out in low level matches in European countriesfirst, then move on to the tournaments gradually . At last this reform can be popularized in the whole world. 2. FIFA can intensify the reform and supervision to the referees management system, training the semi-professional referee to the full-time referee, and improving their enforcement capabilities and proficiency. 3. After increasing the restricted referee, FIFA can extend the referee's enforcement period and improve the treatment. 4. China Football Association should support FIFA's reform measure positively and try it out in the domestic league matches, especially in the College football leagues and Teenagers amateur football games.