The event of the summer for football fans, EURO 2008, will take place in Austria and Switzerland and is set to start saturday 7th of June. The amount of coverage this event gets the next month will overshadow anything else in Europe. The coverage will, as it should, focus on the teams, the matches and the players. If you need to know anything about Fernando Torres and what he’s up to during the next couple of weeks, the media will tell you and show you pictures and video.
I, on the other hand, will tell you about the referees in this tournament. The twelve officiating pairs were announced in December ’07 and during the next 31 games they will overlook the players and managers on the field. The huge number of viewers this tournament will get throughout the world, the referees will be closely followed and their mistakes will be highlighted by every newspaper and television reporter only minutes after the final whistle. I will try to give you a balanced view of the situations and decisions of the referees.
The list consists of twelve refereeing pairs, and eight fourth officials:
Referee, assistant referee, assstant referee (country)
Konrad Plautz, Egon Bereuter, Markus Mayr (Austria)
Frank de Bleeckere, Peter Hermann, Alex Verstraeten (Belgium)
Howard Webb, Darren Cann, Mike Mullarkey (England)
Herbert Fandel, Carsten Kadach, Volker Wezel (Germany)
Kyros Vassaras, Dimitiris Bozartzidis, Dimitiris Saraidaris (Greece)
Roberto Rosetti, Alessandro Griselli, Paolo Calcagno (Italy)
Pieter Vink, Adriaan Inia, Hans ten Hoove (Netherlands)
Tom Henning Øvrebø, Geir Åge Holen, Jan Petter Randen (Norway)
Ľuboš Micheľ, Roman Slysko, Martin Balko (Slovakia)
Manuel Mejuto González, Juan Carlos Yuste Jiménez, Jesús Calvo Guadamuro (Spain)
Peter Fröjdfeldt, Stefan Wittberg, Henrik Andren (Sweden)
Massimo Busacca, Matthias Arnet, Stephane Cuhat (Switzerland)
Fourth official (country)
Ivan Bebek (Croatia)
Stephane Lannoy (France)
Viktor Kassai (Hungary)
Kristinn Jakobsson (Iceland)
Grzegorz Gilewski (Poland)
Olegario Benquerenca (Portugal)
Craig Thomson (Scotland)
Damir Skomina (Slovenia)
- The oldest referee in the group is Peter Frojdfeldt at 44 years, and the tournament is his first major tournament appointment.
- From this group, only Lubos Michel and Manuel Mejuto González participated in EURO 2004.
- Howard Webb is the youngest referee at 36, and this is his first major senior tournament.
- Massimo Busacca, Franck de Bleeckere, Lubos Michel and Roberto Rosetti all participated in the previous World Cup.
- Lubos Michel, Manuel Mejuto González and Herbert Fandel have all refereed the Champions League final (2008, 2007, 2005).
- Peter Frojdfeldt, Lubos Michel, Massimo Busacca and Herbert Fandel have refereed the UEFA Cup final (2008, 2003, 2007, 2004).
- Konrad Plautz, Massimo Busacca, Herbert Fandel and Roberto Rosetti refereed the UEFA Champions League semi-finals this season.
- Lubos Michel, Kyros Vassaras, Tom Henning Øvrebø and Franck de Bleeckere refereed the UEFA Cup semi-finals.
- Howard Webb and Manuel Mejuto González were the only referees not to referee a semi-final or final in the Champions League or UEFA Cup.
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