Chennai: The Fifa World Cup not only showcases the best players and attracts the most passionate fans, it also features the top referees. Referees from all continents are in the mix for the 2018 World Cup. Little known countries such as Tahiti and Gambia have representatives in the list of 35 main referees, although India has none.
It’s an eclectic group indeed if you look at their professions: air-conditioning engineer, carpenter, director of a meat company, foreign trade analyst and sociologist. If you feel most referees resemble your primary school teachers for their obsession on discipline, you are not wrong because teaching is the predominant profession among the World Cup referees with as many as seven — including Nestor Pitana who was in charge of the tournament opener between Russia-Saudi Arabia — being teachers.
Refereeing runs in Iranian Alireza Faghani’s family as his younger brother, father-in-law and brother-in-law are all referees. Four more referees took up the whistle after being inspired by their fathers. Having a referee at home is the most likely source of motivation for someone else in the family to take the plunge in the thankless profession.
Not surprisingly, most of them became referees after unfulfilled careers as footballers. It is only appropriate that quite a few officials in Russia have cited running as their hobby because refereeing involves a lot of it. Travelling is another familiar hobby for many referees whose profession often takes them to various parts of the world.
United Arab Emirates’ Mohammed Abdulla Mohammed, a financial auditor, stands out with his unusual hobby: collecting classic cars. Players who have the habit of pushing and shoving officials must be careful with Gambia’s Bakary Gassama because wrestling is one of his hobbies. And, no player would like to be pinned down to the ground by a middle-aged man with a couple of billion people watching. Getting physical with Norber Hauata of Tahiti is also fraught with danger as he is a karate exponent.
Likewise, few could win an argument with Nawaf Shurralla (Bahrain), Sergei Karasev (Russia) and Felix Brych (Germany) because the three are qualified lawyers in addition to being experts on the laws of the game.
Football may be a physical game but it has not prevented Ghead Grisha of Egypt from developing an interest in chess. No player can fool Jair Marrufo with play-acting because the U.S. official is a passionate lover of theatre. Obviously, he can sift theatrics from truth. There is also a cinematographer, Poland’s Szymon Marciniak, in the referees’ pool.
English referee Graham Poll committed a blunder at the 2006 World Cup by dishing out three yellow cards to one player but you can bet your bottom penny on Paraguay’s Enrique Caceres not doing the same because number crunching is his bread and butter as an accountant in a government company. Don’t be surprised if some of the decisions of Italy’s Gianluca Rocchi are illuminating because he owns a lighting company with his family.
Brazilian Sandro Ricci’s name will be there in football history forever, as he became the first referee to confirm a World Cup goal using goal-line technology during the France-Honduras match at the 2014 World Cup his country staged.
Finally, there is some solace for India. England that founded modern football and formulated its rules also doesn’t have a representative in Russia.
