An official meeting of minds

On the surface, football and tennis appear to be extremely different sports. While the action we watch every weekend in LaLiga features 11-strong teams doing battle on a sizeable pitch, there are never more than two players on each side of a tennis court, where the dimensions are significantly smaller.

But do these and other differences affect the way matches are officiated?

To discuss this and more, Liga BBVA referee Carlos Velasco Carballo and top tennis official Felix Torralba came together out on the centre court at the Caja Magica, the venue for the ongoing 2016 Mutua Madrid Open. They had a pleasant conversation about their respective jobs, which covered subjects such as how they handle making mistakes and the potential influence of crowd pressure on decisions.

"It wasn't until I started watching my games back on TV that I realised that what I saw out on the pitch often didn't reflect reality," Velasco Carballo admitted in a show of humility and common sense. Torralba echoed these thoughts with equal down-to-earthness, noting that, "The human eye cannot tell from 15 metres away whether a ball has bounced inside or outside the court."