Law 5 - The Referee

Sunday, 20 November 2022

A late arrival makes his mark - Wilson Seneme and the choices to officiate the first four games at Qatar 2022

When Armando Marques (Brazilian, one of the candidates to referee the final of the World Cup in 1974) was overlooked in favour of another referee, he was furious. He called the organisation of the refs at that tournament shameful, and declared "the committee is officially composed of nine members, but [in reality] everything is decided by three people - Aston, the Austrian Seipelt and [José María] Codesal". Marques would have had more chance this time round.

After the assignments for the first two days of matches at this World Cup were released, there are no prizes for guessing who the three powerful men of Qatar 2022 are. Even by FIFA's standards however, the politics has become particuarly brazen this time round.

Wilson Seneme ponders how to invite even more Brazilians to Qatar

World Cup 2022 - Referee appointments for matches 2-4

Wilson Seneme might have arrived late in Qatar, but he now definitely has arrived - two of three matches on the second day will be handled by the Brazilians, Claus (England vs. Iran) and Sampaio (Senegal vs. Netherlands). In addition, the home referee features at the earliest point in the tournament for twenty years: Al-Jassim has the late game, USA against Wales.

The border to virtue-signalling lunacy didn't crumble (yet) - instead, FIFA's Italians bet on the Italian who can't really run to referee the opening game of Qatar 2022

Italy's Pierlugi Collina, Roberto Rosetti, Nicola Rizzoli and their fellow committee members finally arrived at the choice of Italy's Daniele Orsato to handle Qatar vs. Ecuador, the opening game of World Cup 2022. A quite sound choice, Orsato is an extremely experienced and excellent referee who will be able to handle the heat of the Arab-Latin American tie and surely deliver a great performance. But he was chosen after a MD-2 which certainly bordered on the farcical and surreal, and featured a very special FIFA version of 'musical chairs'.