In soccer, there’s the fourth official whom you’ll see often on touchline between two opposing benches. They have 3 main jobs and these are:
- Keeping track of all stoppages that took place throughout the game
- Informs every player how much time is added to make up for them by way of flashing a number on board and;
- Verifying substitutions
Aside from that, the fourth official is checking the equipment used to be substituted before recording changes and posting numbers of players who are involved on board. Last but not the least, the fourth official is managing the liaison from the team to the referee.
More often than not, they are bearing brunt of dissatisfaction of manager with the decision made by the referee.
Is there a 5th official?
There’s a vocal movement inside football to also include in-game replays to be able to guarantee accuracy of refereeing decisions that are turning matches from instances when the player offside after getting a score, did the ball actually crossed the line and so on and so forth.
Some plans to introduce video replays do call for adding 5th official which is stationed in booth above the pitch. The job, it is to assess all contested decisions.