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referee categories

Ahead of each new season Uefa releases a list containing different referee categories and referees. This list will be the list from which Uefa chooses referees for Champions League, Europa League and various youth competitions. The referees on the Elite category will mainly be in charge of Champions League games, the Premier/Premier Development/Cat 2 will handle Europa League and Cat 3 and 4 will take charge of qualifiers to Europa League and youth games.

On the Elite category we have few changes, with only two referees promoted from the Premier development category. Manuel Mejuto Gonzalez, Tom Henning Øvrebø and Roberto Rosetti have all retired from refereeing. Gianluca Rocchi (ITA) and Kevin Blom (NED) are the new Elite referees.

Elite category
Frank De Bleeckere (01/07/1966), Belgium
Claus Bo Larsen (28/10/1965), Denmark
Martin Atkinson (31/03/1971), England
Howard Melton Webb (14/07/1971), England
Laurent Duhamel (10/10/1968), France
Stéphane Laurent Lannoy (18/09/1969), France
Wolfgang Stark (20/11/1969), Germany
Felix Brych Felix (03/08/1975), Germany
Florian Meyer (21/11/1968), Germany
Viktor Kassai (10/09/1975), Hungary
Gianluca Rocchi (25/08/1973), Italy Promoted from PD
Roberto Rosetti (18/09/1967), Italy
Nicola Rizzoli (05/10/1971), Italy
Alain Hamer (10/12/1965), Luxembourg
Pieter Vink (13/03/1967), Netherlands
Kevin Blom (21/02/1974), Netherlands Promoted from PD
Bjorn Kuipers (28/03/1973), Netherlands
Terje Hauge (05/10/1965), Norway
Tom Henning Øvrebø (26/06/1966), Norway
Olegaria Benquerença (18/10/1969), Portugal
Pedro Proença Oliveira Alves Garcia (03/11/1970), Portugal
Craig Alexander Thomson (20/06/1972), Scotland
Damir Skomina Damir (05/08/1976), Slovenia
Alberto Undiano Mallenco (08/10/1973), Spain
Manuel Mejuto Gonzalez (16/04/1965), Spain
Martin Hansson (06/04/1971), Sweden
Jonas Eriksson (28/03/1974), Sweden
Massimo Busacca (06/02/1969), Switzerland

Premier category
Pavel Kralovec (16/08/1977), Czech Republic Promoted from PD
Michael Dean (02/07/1968), England
Kristinn Jakobsson (11/06/1969), Iceland
Alon Yefet (01/09/1972), Israel Promoted from PD
Eric Braamhaar (13/10/1966), Netherlands
Alexandru Dan Tudor (13/09/1971), Romania Promoted from PD
Darko Ceferin (11/07/1968), Slovenia
Eduardo Iturralde Gonzalez (20/02/1967), Spain

Premier development category
Thomas Einwaller (25-04-1977), Austria
Serge Gumienny (14-04-1972), Belgium
Ivan Bebek (30-05-1977), Croatia
Tony Chapron (23-04-1972), France
Manuel Gräfe (21-09-1973), Germany Promoted from cat 2
Alan Kelly (09-04-1975), Ireland
Svein Oddvar Moen (22-01-1979), Norway
Bruno Miguel Duarte Paixao (18-05-1974), Portugal
Pavel Cristian Balaj (17-08-1971), Romania
Alexei Nikolaev (01-08-1971), Russia
William Collum (18-01-1979), Scotland
Carlos Velasco Carballo (16-03-1971), Spain
Stefan Johannesson (22-11-1971), Sweden
Cüneyt Cakir (23-11-1976), Turkey

You can download the complete document from here (pdf). Note that the list includes Roberto Rosetti and Michael Kempter, referees who will not work international games this season.

Other list:

Women – ElitePremiereCat 2Cat 3
Futsal (Men) – Cat 1Cat 2Cat 3

Women and futsal lists via Dutch referee blog.

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Honourably discharged

by Martin Rødvand on December 14, 2009

With the new year approaching, UEFA will be revising their referee categories. Most notably we have a few referees who’s reached the retirement age of 45 and will be forced to retire from international duties.

Below I have listed all the retiring referees (from age), all from the list previously published. In the new list, published some time in January/February we should expect to see some promotions to the Elite category, and perhaps some new referees in the category 3/4.

Elite category
Konrad Plautz, Austria
Iouri Baskakov, Russia
Michael Riley, England
Bertrand Layec, France (comment)

Premier category
Paul Allaerts, Belgium
Costas Kapitanis, Cyprus
Nikolay Ivanov, Russia
Vladimir Hrinak, Slovakia

Category 2
Jouni Hyytia, Finland

Category 3
Karen Nalbandyan, Armenia
Stefan Messner, Austria
Anthony Zammit, Malta
Paulo Manuel Gomes Costa, Portugal

A few trivial facts about the most prominent retiring referees:

  • Konrad Plautz participated in EURO 2008.
  • Michael Riley participated in EURO 2004.
  • Vladimir Hrinak was fourth official in the 2008 final between Manchester Utd and Chelsea, a match Lubos Michel refereed.

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