Celebrating goals and surrounding the referee: Adapting interaction on the pitch in times of social distancing in the English Premier League

There is a growing research interest in the effects of social distancingmeasures introduced to prevent the spread of COVID-19 on social inter-action, interpersonal relationships, and personal wellbeing. In the soccerarena, too, players, referees, managers, and fans are subject to socialdistancing measures when engaging in joint activities in times of thepandemic. This paper examines to what extent agents on the soccerpitch have adapted joint communicative acts such as goal celebrationsand surrounding the referee as part of social distancing measures. It doesso by focusing particularly on interactions between player-player (goalcelebrations) and player-referee (issuing of yellow/red cards) in broad-casted Premier League games pre- and post-lockdown during the 2019/20season by examining and comparing two datasets: games in the lastround before the three-month lockdown break (round 29, 10 games, 7-9 March 2020) and the games in the first round after the restart of season2019/20 with the implemented social distancing rules as prescribed by thePremier League's Season 2019/20Restart Guide (round 30, 10 games, 19-22 June 2020). Based on an exploratory, qualitative multimodal analysis ofa total of 43 goal celebrations and the issuing of 66 yellow cards and onered card in the two datasets, we highlight varying realizations of similarjoint communicative acts, thereby demonstrating how agents on thepitch adapt their interaction to social distancing rules. The results showplayers' occasional hesitation to gather closely with other players tocelebrate a goal and their deviation to more common practices of enga-ging with others during times of COVID-19, for example fist bumps.Adaptation of interaction can also be observed with regard to player-referee interactions following a booking, most notably concerning sur-rounding the referee in contested decisions: While players still movetowards the referee seemingly crowding the referee, there is, in somescenes, a visible restraint by players to ensure enough distancing betweenthe players and the referee.