The Swiss match official has been selected by Uefa’s referees committee to take charge of Friday’s Uefa Super Cup final between Internazionale and Atletico Madrid in Monaco.
The 41-year-old is accustomed to big games having taken charge of the 2007 Uefa Cup final in Glasgow and the 2009 Uefa Champions League final in Rome. Also selected for the 2010 World Cup, Busacca was one of the favourites to get the final game of the tournament. It came as a surprise to many when Busacca and his assistants were among the first referees to be sent home from the tournament, having refereed only one game in the group stage.
The match at Stade Louis II will be the first Super Cup final involved in the additional assistant referees experiment.
27/08/10
Internazionale – Atlético Madrid
Referee: Massimo Busacca, Switzerland
Assistant referees: Matthias Arnet, Manuel Navarro
Additional assistant referees: Stephan Studer, Cyril Zimmermann
Fourth official: Sascha Kever
Uefa delegate: Odd Flattum, Norway
Uefa referee observer: Kyros Vassaras, Greece
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Congratulations to Massimo on this appointment. This match will hopefully help him to get over the WC disappointment. It’ shows that UEFA still considers him to be the leading referee of europe. He is clearly one of the most experienced referees in Europe and he derserves this appointment.
He is obviously highly trusted by Uefa and maybe they wanted to give him a big game after his disappointing World Cup.
The two referee committees, Uefa’s and Fifa’s, seem to have different opinions on the various referees. Viktor Kassai is not nearly as highly rated in Uefa as he is in Fifa (getting a semi-final in WC).
We may have seen the same thing in 2006 when Terje Hauge was omitted from the World Cup. He was appointed to the CL final the same year.
you’re right! refs like Kassai, Bebek, Einwaller end even Lannoy are much more respected by FIFA than by UEFA. So my guess is that Duhamel could be the french referee at EURO 2010 and German Felix Brych instead of Wolfgang Stark.
There probably is a rivalry between the Ref Comitees of UEFA und FIFA to push different referess.
FIFA’s appointment approach seems generally to be a bit odd. In 2009 for example Busacca was appointed to referee at the WC U17 tournament although he had previously refereed at two WC U20 tournaments.
And I will never understand why two Refs from New Zealand were nominated for WC 2010. I have the impression that FIFA sets a high value on political and continental considerations in choosing the referees much more than UEFA does.
P.S. What happened whith Terje Hauge saddens me. He still is a top class referee and I can’t understand why he wasn’t chosen for WC 2006 and WC 2010 and for EURO 2008. Hauge is a example of a referee whom UEFA didn’t trust anymore to give him any important games.
Luckily there are two young norwegian referees (Svein Oddvar Moen and Tom Harald Hagen) who surely will continue the great refereeing tradition from Norway. UEFA obviously has plans with them in future.
I am impressed by Busacca. He has become a great referee. He is very lucky that his observer is Kyros Vassaras one of the most experienced referees in Europe and a member of the UEFA Referees Committee.
Busacca fully deserves this appointment after the World Cup disappointment