Abstract
Along the years, the analysis of soccer referees perfomance has interested the experts and we can find several types of studies in literature using in particular cardiac imaging. The aim of this retrospective study was to observe relationship between VO2max uptake and some conventional and not-conventional echocardiographic parameters. In order to perform this evaluation, we have enrolled 20 referees, belonging to Italian Soccer Referees' Association and we have investigated cardiovascular profile of them. We found a strong direct relationship between VO2max and global longitudinal strain of left ventricle assessed by means of speckle tracking echocardiographic analysis (R2=0.8464). The most common classic echocardiographic indexes have showed mild relations (respectively, VO2max vs EF: R2=0.4444; VO2max vs LV indexed mass: R2=0.2268). Therefore, our study suggests that longitudinal strain could be proposed as a specific echocardiographic parameter to evaluate the soccer referees performance.
Highlights
Leading soccer federations include into their organisation specialists for monitoring of referees’ health and performance
The main characteristics of the study population are reported in Table 1: there are physiological values of body mass index (BMI) and blood pressure values; heart rate (HR) was in reference ranges, while VO2max is comparable with values acquired in already quoted studies about referees [1,2,3,4]
We have found some papers inhering the study of soccer refereeing [1,2,3,4]
Summary
Leading soccer federations include into their organisation specialists for monitoring of referees’ health and performance. In the last two decades, we can find an increasing number of articles about soccer refereeing [1, 2]. Castagna et al [3] extensively reviewed physiological aspects of referees; specific scientific background applied to soccer referees has been developed in last years [4]. The experts studied physiological characteristics of referees. We can quote Yo-Yo Intermittent recovery test level 1 (YYIR1) which is frequently used by some national referees associations including Italian Referees’ Association [6]; YY-IR1 has substituted the previous Cooper test cited in the first studies on Italian referees [7]
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