The French referee has been assigned to the final act of the competition, after having officiated twice in group stage and a quarterfinal in KO stage.
Another honor added to her international career, after the FIFA Women's WC final in 2019.
27 July 2025
18:00 CET - St. Jakob-Park, Basel
ENGLAND - SPAIN
Referee: Stéphanie Frappart FRA Assistant Referee 1: Camille Soriano FRA
Assistant Referee 2: Francesca Di Monte ITA
Fourth Official:Maria Sole Ferrieri Caputi ITA
Reserve Assistant Referee: Susanne Küng SUI
Video Assistant Referee: Willy Delajod FRA
Video Assistant Referee: Willy Delajod FRA
Assistant Video Assistant Referee 1: Christian Dingert GER
Assistant Video Assistant Referee 2: Dennis Johan Higler NED
UEFA Referee Observer: Dagmar Damková CZE
UEFA Referee Observer: Dagmar Damková CZE
UEFA Delegate: Aleksandra Pejkovska MKD
Unfair decision, Frappart got everything Super Cup Final, WC final, EC final now, got matches in EL,CL...nonsense
ReplyDeleteShe's the best. Far ahead of the others. Simple as that.
DeleteWhile there is some truth to what Eric X says.
DeleteIn the big picture, it shows how truly limited the UEFA Referee Committee is in regard to their current pool of supposed "Elite" women's referees.
Too many wannabes who have glaring deficiencies in their skill set keeping them from being truly "Elite".
Or maybe, just maybe, it shows an utter failure of whoever is in charge of the women's refereeing department within UEFA. For failing to properly develop new talent to replace the highly talented crop of referees who have recently retired.
I really liked a point made by a user a few days ago: the question we might ask ourselves is whether, despite everything, UEFA has ultimately failed to produce other strong figures at the top of women's refereeing, and has once again saved itself under the shield of the French official? Who, in any case, absolutely deserved this final thank also to the penalty call in the Italy match, an outstanding technical decision, in my opinion.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the criticism we can send to Dagmar Damková and the current state of women’s refereeing in Europe is that there was a bit too much predetermined thinking during this competition, with appointments often based on prestige rather than strictly on performance. I believe some referees were stopped even though they hadn’t done that badly, simply because they were considered of a certain level on paper, while others advanced. This wasn’t strictly a tournament based on how each official performed, but as we have seen, that’s very hard to happen exclusively at this level in international refereeing.
One should be happy for Ferrieri Caputi, who woud have been the second candidate at this point, while they really tried everything with Olofsson but couldn't make it (going back to the earlier point). I still believe the general intent was to avoid appointing the Frenchwoman again for a big Women's international final, but she absolutely deserved it.
Referee Observer : Dagmar Damkova CZE
ReplyDeleteFrom an English perspective more than happy. She did the all English Super Cup, has refereed the men's international team and seems to get on with the way we like to play the game. Far and away the top Women's referee (whether she is a great referee in the men's game is for others to decide)
ReplyDeleteSo, we should look forward to England hacking their way through the match in an attempt to neutralize the more skilled and possession-based Spaniards?
DeleteFor the good of the game, I truly hope that Frappart shows more of a spine (for the entire 90 minutes) than Huerta de Aza and Martincic showed in their respective matches.
What matches were you watching ? The Italians committed far more fouls than the English. They stopped playing after half time, parking the bus and did everything they could to stall for time , time wasting you name it? I have no qualms with using these but to claim that England were hacking their opponents down is laughable when they were the ones chasing the game while their opponents attempted to bring them down
DeleteI may have red/white tinted glasses on but in the main the English games are easier to referee as there is little histrionics
ReplyDeleteI felt there should have been a couple of further YCs in the SF for English players but to say they "hacked" their way to the final is disingenuous at best, factually incorrect at worst.
Germany gave away quite a few "clever" fouls in SF but I don't see anyone criticising their tactics.
Player for player Spain are the better side; therefore England will have to out think and out compete
Nah uh. And Germany did it too. Great comeback pal.
DeleteI stand by what I said.
England have been one of the if not the most petulant and whiny teams at the tournament.
They act shocked and whine whenever a referee dares to whistle a foul against them.
The referees have allowed Bronze to continuously foul in order to make up for what she lacks in skill. She's the male version of a Kyle Walker or Pepe or Rudiger.
Dagmar Damkova doesn't seem to have much confidence in her observers: she shared the quarter-final matches at least with Gyöngy Gaal but after that made everything completely her own - in the KO stage she observed 5 of the 7 matches herself. In addition with the only four observers in the group stage (where she "robbed" one of them the opening match which she also observed herself), this appointment strategy seems extremely authoritarian to me.
ReplyDeleteMaybe she needs the extra money....
DeleteOr maybe she's a control freak who just has to have her hands in anything and everything. This makes it even more clear as to who deserves the blame for the overall poor state of women's refereeing in UEFA.
DeleteRosetti also acted as the observer at EURO 2024 for two out of the last three matches (Zwayer and Letexier), as well as the opening match (Turpin).
DeleteFor other major matches, a different committee member was appointed—for instance, during Vincic’s semi-final.
The main difference is that, in the men’s tournament, there are more committee members.
I don’t see anything unusual. Yes, Damková also observed two quarter-finals, but those involved the main final candidates. That may not be so strange after all.
I find the (only) four female observers in the group stage extraordinarily few, and the specific names too; those currently being used in the European Cup qualifiers are much more familiar to me. Both criteria are, to me, significantly different from a men's European Championship. Why does Dagmar Damkova rely on so few female observers, and why specifically these?
DeleteI come to this site primarily to learn about the role that officiating plays in modern day football, e.g. technical discussion about what's a foul and what isn't and why, for example. But the political discussions are also interesting and even essential, in light of the move towards football as "primarily entertainment."
ReplyDeleteFrom a management point of view, could it be possible that Damkova receives such varying views of referee's performances from other observers that she now must take matters into her own hands to make proper decisions and recommendations going forward? The performance of Martincic could easily be argued as having skewed the outcome of the match from the beginning because of withholding (justified / necessary?) YCs until very late in the match. And/or the possibility that there may be forces at work to push further towards this type of game management among women's referees.
I agree with whomever said it earlier in this UEFA playoff series: Women's football is good enough on its own without such changes. Record-breaking crowds here says that directly.
Thank you for this valuable site. Especially to Chefren.
Thank you for your kind comment and acknowledgement. It was I who posted those words.
Delete"Women's football is good enough on its own without such changes"
My view on this football wide. There is absolutely no need for referees to be used as pawns in order to artificially manufacture flow or excitement in any match by completely disregarding/trampling the LoTG.
World Football is a SPORT. It's not WWE which is "Sports Entertainment".
Thanks for this post, OldSwissLady.
DeleteYou have a more than valid argument here, I must say.
It's indeed possible that Damkova wanted to take the affair by herself in the very last stages of the competition (nevertheless, too late in case, because all appointments already made), but a realistic scenario is that she wanted to respect the reports of some observers and for this reason she appointed again the involved referees for other games. I think that you make a selection of trusted observers for a final tournament, you must give some credit to them, otherwise you can do everything by yourself (ot it can be just all about committee members, or even more making things clear before "you observe but we decide..."). This would explain some weird choices, but staying at Damkova, she watched Alina Pesu, then she didn't appear for a long time. Given the observation, one could have expected at least a KO game for her (otherwise why that focus?), but it didn't happen. And... the Romanian was not that bad if compared to others, but she didn't get KO stage. OK, there was the soft penalty, but we had definitely worse performances.. so in that case the assessment was rather harsh. Two Romanians both ended at GS. In other words, maybe with a different structure and Damkova watching everything, we could have been totally different management and assignments... but of course it's just speculation and we can't know more.
I am not sure whether the importance of the observation reports is being overrated: especially at a European Championship, the chairwoman of the referees' committee will analyze all key scenes herself and form her own judgment. I cannot imagine that Dagmar Damkova just records all the scores in Excel, sorts them in descending order, and then decides, "Oh dear, 0.1 points too few - I will not use you again!"
DeleteI found it interesting that there was an extremely limited circle of only four observers (cronies?) in the group stage (only the opening match was monitored by Dagmar Damkova herself; picking the cherries?), considering that Spain's national team played in Group B, a Spanish observer was present on all match days in both Group A and Group C, and there was also a Spanish referee. This severely restricted the options if one wanted to avoid double observations.
OT:
ReplyDeleteIvana Projkovska with 3 game so far
Peru-Ecuador
Venezuela-Bolivia
Chile-Uruguay
I think she only have 1 match left (SF). But with low number of attendance and low spotlight at Copa America Femenina, and on the other hand we saw many poor performance from big names in Women Euro. Did you think Damkova made mistake and of course Projkovska unfortunately become "sacrificial lamb"?
https://streambug.org/cv/66bdb3
DeleteBased on this clip, I don't think Projkovska was any great loss for the Women's Euro.
I've watched the Copa America Femina.
DeleteOut of the three matches that the Macedonian had.
Only her first match was somewhat competitive. But Peru and Ecuador (other than their rivalry) aren't exactly top-level teams. To be honest, her performance wasn't exactly convincing. She struggled to adjust to the South American style of play.
Her second match was an outright scrimmage. Where Venezuela romped to an unopposed 7-1 victory over an overwhelmed and amateurish Bolivia. What Mikael posted above is just one of the incidents that left a lot to be desired from the Macedonian. And this was in a one-sided lopsided match where she shouldn't have has any problems.
Her third match, on paper was supposed to be a competitive tilt between two teams attempting to snag the second spot in the group. But Chile simply didn't show up and Uruguay cruised to a fairly uneventful 3-0 win.
After three games, I think she's done. I honestly don't see her working a semi-final. But she may get the 5th place match out of courtesy.
This year, unlike past years. The referee exchange was quite unequal. While Alves Batista is a top tier referee, Projkovska is "elite" in name only. She's been unconvincing at this tournament and unconvincing in the UEFA matches that I've seen her work.
Anybody on the blog have any referee info for the WAFCON Final?
ReplyDeleteBased on seniority and experience I'm thinking Akhona Makalima (RSA)
Antsino Twanyanyukwa (Namibia)
DeleteOver the years, I've seen plenty of poor performances from female referees. But in a class of her own is Milagros Arruela (PER) in last night's Brasil v Colombia at the Copa America Femina.
ReplyDeleteEntirely way too many incidents to list them all.
If anybody has a chance to watch the match. You'll see a referee who was in over her head and overwhelmed from the get-go.