Introduction:Officials take a vital role in almost every competition-oriented game sport.For this reason, an interesting area of research has emerged over recent years with respect to sport officiating.However, the majority of the football-related studies can be characterised as pursuing a "from-theory-to-practice" strategy.Therefore, the present project aimed on the reconstruction of subjective theories of elite football referees and on the identification of problems in the practice of top-level football officiating. Methods:Semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data from 23 European elite referees, either from UEFA's elite group (19) or first group (4).With the average length of 19.4 min (SD = 5.4 min, range: 10.5 min-39.2min), all interviews were transcribed verbatim, analysed independently by two coders to generate a category framework which was necessary for further processing based on the qualitative content analysis. Results:From the entire interview material, the data analysis resulted in 91 raw-data themes that were grouped into 22 lower-order themes and further structured into 7 higherorder themes, namely: (1) descriptive, (2) characteristics of a good elite referee, (3) difficulties, (4) pre-match preparation, (5) communication through headset, (6) decision-making, and (7) decision-making training. Discussion:The vast researched area of visual capabilities and perception enhancement in refereeing is also recognised by the interviewees as highly relevant.A clear need for further research, however, could be revealed for an optimisation of the following topics: The pre-match preparation, the evaluation of supporting technical devices, the development of innovative training tools for improving decision-making quality, the optimisation of the communication within the referee team, particularly through the headset, and the evaluation of supporting training methods like mental practice.Hence, for sport scientists with a special interest in applied work, these topics can be recommended for conducting further research.