Who will FIFA choose?
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| Wilton Sampaio from Brazil seems to be a safe name for 2026 WC |
The selection for the World Cup must only be, at most (even taking into account travel and delays), only weeks away. I don’t watch all the games handled by the cadre of preselected referees - BUT, I probably have watched a number of matches which, understandably, were not on the radar for the majority of Law5 readers. So, I wanted to present an analysis about who from my perspective is likely to be chosen for the (North) American WC, based on my understanding of what FIFA is trying to achieve in refereeing.
The analysis is predicated on two factors, which if they turn out to be different to what I’ll indicate, would make what is written below look rather silly: a) that I’m correct about the identity of certain selections, the ‘100 percenters’, and, b) the rumours circulating that FIFA will completely bloat out the selection, compared to the slot allocations that were originally allotted (adding ≈2 slots to each confed). I’m fairly confident on both of these. The same sort of rumours, namely that Rosetti would increase the number of European referees at the last Euro to even 20 or 22 were -- at least from what I heard -- quite prevalent. I guess that practicality probably ruled against that in the end: there was actually no sense to throw the since-2000 formula in the bin just to include (fe) Sanchez Martinez and Gozubuyuk, so the status quo quite rightly remained.
The best argument in favour of increasing the numbers would be travel, in this WC the antithesis of Qatar 2022 (there will be three different referee bases), as clearly the strategy that FIFA used in 1994 of using quartets of two refs and two linesmen to work games on consecutive days is now long since obsolete. However, I think the travel issue mostly pertains towards reserve referees, which in the era of VAR is now a rather loathed afterthought for the appointment makers, and shouldn’t be a big issue. Overall, I think that Busacca and Collina will resist the temptation to repeat what CONMEBOL did at the last Copa America (and what FIFA used to do until the mid-80s) and take a random, political number of referees to keep everyone happy and then have no clear target for how to use all of the officials whom they have chosen.
But: this is a unique World Cup in almost every respect, so I guess nothing is off the table. The confed-by-confed analysis will follow, starting with AFC, and followed by the remaining confederations in the coming days.
AFC [Asia]
100 percenters: Alireza FAGHANI, Khaled AL-TURAIS.
Let’s start with clearly the highest-rated AFC referee at the present time, Alireza Faghani. I don’t want to write something excessively harsh, but I must say that the refereeing of the Iranian-Australian official is from my point of view the perfect microcosm of why removing an age limit for referees was a mistake: his approach to matches in recent years seems to resemble that of an experienced ‘Sunday League’ official in England; he misses way too many (clear!) fouls, doesn’t have a clear line in disciplinary sanctions, and his manner of interacting with players is really far from satisfying, and seems to mostly consist of losing his temper rather too easily. In the three run-up games to the Club WC final, Faghani had mostly got away with this manner of refereeing, but everything completely fell apart in the final, and to extend the metaphor of ‘Sunday League’ - had a referee handled a Supply League game here (Tier IX/X of grassroots football) in that match, undoubtedly he would have been rejected by the assessor with a very low mark and thus been a candidate for demotion. The way in which Faghani handles matches (for instance) in the Asian CL this season has shown no improvement on the subpar level of officiating from his Club WC. It is clear that Faghani is well-regarded personally by Busacca and Collina, but when the heat of the tournament is on for the assignors, I’m not completely sure that will save him from a sacrificial UEFA-CONMEBOL appmnt relatively early in the tournament - at least, that would be the most canny way to use the then-48yo referee from my perspective. It is easy to write dramatic statements on this blog which have no correlation to real life, but I would say that in principal, the manner in which Faghani handled the PSG-Chelsea final was so amateur/poor that he deserved to be treated like Heber Lopes in 2016, ie total excommunication. Anyway, you can’t question the experience on Faghani’s CV and probably that alone is enough to justify his (inevitable) vote for the WC.
Two of the most ‘in’ nations in Gianni Infantino’s FIFA (indeed two of the most ‘in’ three) are Saudi Arabia and Qatar; people have a short memory, but the beneficial treatment experienced by these two countries is exactly what happened to South Korea in the 1990s and early 2000s thanks to the influence of Chung Mong-joon, about which I really ought write an article to explain what really happened in WC2002. Anyway: some of the matches at WC2026 will be refereed by SAFF and QFA officials, that is quite sure. These facts will obscure the reality that Khaled Al-Turais is a good AFC referee and his selection for the WC is ultimately one that will be merited. I was very pleased to see FIFA, no doubt assisted by the observations of Manuel Navarro (former Swiss linesman, Busacca’s friend, right-hand man to the Swiss for some years in FIFA) switch to Al-Turais from the rather mediocre official, Al-Hoaish, who quite clearly is not WC-level and was rightly dropped by FIFA from the process. Saudi Arabia actually has a very good tradition of sending strict referees to the World Cup, and in modern terms, Al-Turais coheres to that: he lacks charisma and even basic ‘body tension’ in the way he handles games, but makes up for that with smart decision-making - though, it seems he is experiencing a difficult season domestically. I wouldn’t go too over the top on him, but his inevitable selection will be wrongly dismissed on Law5 as completely political.
A very similar speech can be made as for Al-Turais to the younger of the two Qataris in the race, Salman FALLAHI. I knew Fallahi, from the final of the AFC U23s and his appearance in Yemen-Saudi at the Iraqi Gulf Cup, as rather mediocre and a typical Ballan recommendation: but, I must say, in recent times it seems as though he has managed to reinvent himself (like Al-Turais) as an official with very good technical accuracy. It was said that his selection for the Club WC would precede him from not being selected for the WC, but my personal feeling is the situation has changed and that Fallahi is in a strong position. The problem facing Fallahi is that, as per his demeanour, he is quite distant from players and struggles to either earn respect or empathy from them (Al-Turais can achieve the latter). The incident at the Club WC where a player quite disgracefully tried to kick the ball at him is, unfortunately, the perfect encapsulation of that. So, the doubt about his selection comes from that area: however, I personally would choose him, and still be able to say that it is justifiable and not just ‘an automatic Qatari’.
By far the most interesting question about the Asian choices will be what FIFA decide to do with a very problematic case in their midst, that of Abdulrahman AL-JASSIM. It would have been decided by the relevant officials in the early 2010s that Al-Jassim was heading to WC2022, and that Taleb Salem Al-Marri (the linesman who was AR2 in two WCs with Shukralla) would accompany him. In principle, Al-Jassim is quite a good referee, who has shown the ability to assure match control in even very difficult matches, such as the pre-Covid post-Soviet derby Tajik-Kyrgyz WC qualifier, and one can’t deny that he generally did well in the extremely difficult Arab Cup playoff Sudan-Lebanon. The two big black marks against his name come from two disasters which happened in the very same stadium in FIFA competitions: the very well-known Morocco-Croatia, and the not-that-important Arab Cup game Algeria-Iraq which was handled by him in such an astonishingly bad manner, that writing now I still can’t quite believe it really happened.
While Al-Jassim is so blatantly helped in some respects by the era he is in (QATAR!), he is very clearly not helped in others. The next passage should be worded very carefully. We can start by saying this - different referees are different kind of people, both on and off the field of play; as ‘fans’, we only see the former. The data obtained in the matches for Al-Jassim is rather clear: he doesn’t have great charisma and soft skills. This is, clearly, a disadvantage. If the theme of 2020s in FIFA is ‘be an actor’, then Al-Jassim tries to achieve that by acting in an excessively friendly manner with players, to overcome an apparent lack of ability to naturally have a significant measure of authority over them. Other officials -- whom I am bringing up very deliberately -- like Arppi Filho in the 1980s and Cakir in the 2010s, did not have this problem. Al-Jassim’s consequent over-friendliness reached absolutely comical levels in Algeria-Iraq, but the most blatant trouble that he encountered with it (that I have seen) happened in Morocco-Croatia, when in the last ten minutes of that match, he tried to call over Hakimi in a friendly way, and the PSG right fullback basically told him to ‘f**k off’. This totally disarmed Al-Jassim who had no recourse whatsoever, and just had to stand there and accept being ‘mugged off’, totally losing any authority he had on the FoP. You can’t act like Mateu, if you are not Mateu!
The second limit in modern FIFA circles which surely does not help Al-Jassim is a more suppositional matter, and thus I want to be extremely careful about the phrasing so as to not make an incorrect inference. I’ll explain it like this. At WC2010, two of the best referees were Irmatov (uzb) and Nishimura (jpn). They were trusted by the FIFA refereeing operation at that tournament -- which was led by ‘Great Man of Refereeing’ and indeed the best law-enforcer of all-time, Jose Maria Garcia-Aranda -- and those two officials very clearly knew and savoured that trust that FIFA and Aranda had in them. Shy would be too far, but I don’t think it is much of a secret that Irmatov and (especially) Nishimura carried themselves in a different manner to, say, the UEFA and CONMEBOL referees in that competition (internally, I mean). The situation in Massimo Busacca’s FIFA (for it is he and not Collina who is in charge of 90% of the day-to-day running, so I’m told) and how it works on the inside is quite different to the Aranda times. I would argue that it is not a coincidence that the level of Irmatov and Nishimura moved from “excellent”, to near catastrophic, in a manner which noticeably began at the first big tournament where Busacca was the new refereeing director, Confed 2013 (Irmatov did the famous mistake with the laws and Nishimura was terrible in Spain-Uruguay). It seems this nuance was lost on a lot of people, but the dichotomy of pre-2011 and post-2011 Irmatov/Nishimura is, in my mind, crystal clear. This is my final comment on the topic introduced in this paragraph for the time being.
The reason that I’m bringing this up specifically with regards Al-Jassim is that, amazingly, his WC2022 and Arab Cup 2025 were incredibly similar, to a quite extraordinary degree. I will even break my paragraphed writing style in order to underline this:
>> AAJ receives an appointment early in the competition (Usa-Wales; Sudan-Lebanon)
>> The game, from my perspective, goes well; BUT, the style of refereeing by AAJ, with the referee too much in ‘centre-focus’; I feel this will not, to use a colloqualism, ‘vibe’ well with the vision set out by FIFA in their seminars
>> A long-enough-to-be-noteworthy amount of time passes before AAJ is appointed to referee another match
>> The match itself is not really that important (third place; both Algeria and Iraq were nearly 100% sure of advancing)
>> That second game is handled in a catastrophically bad manner, with AAJ looking (I would go as far as to say) ‘depressed’ on the FoP, and with a tactical approach that vastly differs from the first match
The interesting commentary, therefore, is to speculate what happened in the period between the first and second matches. However much this is or isn’t a very interesting tale in the genre of ‘modern refereeing’, it should be rendered immaterial in the end. With Algeria-Iraq, the wick at the end of the candle ‘Abdulrahman Al-Jassim’ should have finally run out in FIFA refereeing, and according to merit there is absolutely no alternative but to exclude him from the World Cup. The final interesting twist of this long, 10yrs-plus tale is to wonder whether vice-chairman of the referees committee, Hani Ballan, could use his influence to ensure two Qatari trios are selected for the World Cup: the fact that Al-Jassim and Fallahi both used completely different linesmen in the Club WC and Arab Cup respectively last year could lend some credence to that theory. It would be, according to merit, a complete joke were that be the case, but in my eyes it remains a possibility. We will see!
If Al-Jassim can count on the backing of Ballan, there is another AFC candidate for whom it is said the opposite is true, Ahmed AL-KAF from Oman. The journalist from Oman and authoritative source on international refereeing, Issa Said, can’t count himself a Hani Ballan supporters club member - but I would imagine the overall idea that the Qatari referee manager does not himself have a positive view of Al-Kaf for specific reasons is valid. I am not entirely up with the details of this story, and I know Issa has commented here in the past, so I will invite him to write more about it! Not being able to count on the sort of support that the two/three biggest Gulf countries can rely on (Qat, Ksa, Uae in that order) and need to balance the selections across the various regions of AFC, the ever mounting number of officials from Arab AFC nations also goes against the Omani official. Finally, it seems Al-Kaf experienced an informal ‘rejection’ of his work in the Arab Cup: of all fourteen selected officials, he was one of only two who didn’t stand in any role in either the knockout stage of the tournament or on one of the three Intercontinental matches. This would be an understandable ruling by FIFA, because Al-Kaf’s refereeing in his two group games wasn’t really good - he was too on edge, and his disciplinary control did not consist of a stepped approach, but rather indifferentiatingly screaming at players who presented a threat to match control. He missed a very clear penalty live in his first match; I wouldn’t count the OFR to revoke a penalty in the second against him too much. All of this is a bit sad, because Al-Kaf probably became one of the de facto two best referees in Asia, but all told it seems to me rather likely that he will miss out on the World Cup.
The other member of that meritorious duo would be Adham MAKHADMEH, his appearances in the Arab Cup courting (not always undeserving) criticism, but who in my eyes absolutely enhanced his reputation in that tournament, and I feel quite sure that FIFA internally see it the same way too. I recall that there were big hopes for this official from Jordan for quite a while but a bad 2019 (Asian Cup opener and bad performance in U20 Italy-Ecuador) seemed to set him back some years and he was a more-or-less forgotten official in FIFA circles on the road to WC2022. Makhadmeh then came back into focus, it seems partly as a ‘firefighter’ in AFC to handle technically-challenging matches (leaving for instance the Qatari/Saudis with easier, more sonorous ties), and established himself as a candidate for the next World Cup.
In the Arab Cup, the Jordanian official was ‘Borosak-ed’ in his first game: he was called, quite correctly, to an on-field review by the unconvincing Thai VAR Sivakorn Pu-udom in Oman-Saudi. Because the VAR was who he was, and not Irrati/Dankert etc, I very much suspect this already put Makmadmeh’s mind into an ‘adversarial’ position, rather like a Video Support review, as opposed to suspecting he made a mistake. The review was for SFP, the foul should have resulted in a red card, but the original booking only remained after the OFR. This was a mistake, which Makhadmeh can count fortunate that it didn’t curtail his tournament altogether. This affair put Makhadmeh under the pump for his later matches, but the Jordanian responded in probably the best way possible, with first a borderline-heroic handling of the Sudan-Iraq match (taming and even winning over the extremely tricky African side in a deeply impressive way) before authoritatively handling one of the most technically difficult games in the tournament, the Algeria-UAE quarterfinal (though he should probably have awarded a penalty in the last seconds of normal time!). At the very least, the Collina-lookalike from Jordan justified the decision not to reject his performance in the first game where he missed the red card. If I were running WC2026, I would use the tournament to institute a changing of the guard in AFC refereeing stakes: when the time comes, allot Faghani a ‘sacrificable’ game (such as, let’s say, the Miami MD3 Portugal-Colombia) and allow Makhadmeh to be the Asian no1 to handle games later in the tournament, which he has shown the quality to do. The big question should be about whether Makhadmeh has the, to be slightly vernacular about it, ‘cohones’ to still referee well on the big WC stage. But before any of that, I feel quite sure he’ll be selected for the tournament itself.
Regional variation is an important factor in the selection, and allows one to be quite sure that Ilgiz TANTASHEV from Uzbekistan will referee games in the World Cup. Tantashev has one big advantage and one big disadvantage: in his favour, compatriots in both an AFC politician vice president who was a referee (naturally, the aforementioned Irmatov) and one of the most senior Asian instrcutors (a man named Farkhad Abdullaev). But, counting against him is the unfortunate fact that he has a habit of refereeing matches which turn into a massive fight after the final whistle. If one of his WC ties turns into a post-game brawl, it will be the third year running under FIFA auspicies that this has happened to Tantashev after France-Argentina (’24) and River-Inter (’25). A feature, not a bug, I would suggest. Tantashev has improved quite a lot since he was first on my radar in the 2019 Asian Cup, but I think there is a limit to what he can achieve, particularly in terms of match control and respect/fellowship from players in his matches. His selection for the World Cup will not need be a fight internally, and one can hope the same is true of the games he referees in the tournament.
One of the biggest winners from the Arab Cup in the winter was the Chinese referee hoping to upgrade on his reserve role at the last WC, MA Ning. Ma, who gained notoriety for his rather infamous handling of the last Asian Cup final, was synonymous with rather poor and agitated refereeing, apparently managed to find decent form at something approaching the eleventh hour. The candidate from East Asia who went to the previous (2021) Arab Cup, Japan’s Sato, was thereafter deconsidered from the WC list after his very limited level of refereeing in two games there. One perhaps could have expected Ma to wind up with the same fate in the 2025 Arab Cup, but after three quite decent (not more than decent, though) performances, it seems the Chinese won FIFA’s approval and I would judge his treatment in the knockout stage assignments very positively for Ma fans: not ‘risked’ with any game as main referee, but working as fourth official deep into the competition, even on the final. I think any negative past experiences can now be forgotten. Clearly, he would enter the WC as one of the lower-rated Asian refs, and his target should be emulating Lu Jun in 2002 and getting a second match. I think Ma Ning is the right name for East Asia and he should be chosen.
A less exhaustive analysis is needed for the final two candidates. I hadn’t seen (m)any of his games before, but I was impressed with the manner in which Yusuke ARAKI handled the (now-irrelevant?) playoff decider Iraq-UAE in Basra. I think Araki is a good name to be a reserve referee at the World Cup. Finally, I don’t rate highly the refereeing of the Emirati candidate Omar AL-ALI. Al-Ali gives a very agitated and tense impression on the field of play, appearing very close to boiling over and losing his composure. His sole presence on the list probably only owes to the poor refereeing of the other candidate from the UAE, Al-Naqbi, who refereed poorly at the Paris Olympics and was since eliminated from the race. To underline what I mean about Al-Ali, see here an extraordinarily long OFR conducted by him in the third place playoff of the Egyptian Super Cup (so, not the biggest match in the world…): https://youtu.be/sQALQIZBHRc?t=2014. I think the best that Al-Ali can hope for is replicating his position at the Club WC, that of being a reserve referee.
CAF
100 percenters: Mustapha GHORBAL, Dahane BEIDA
Clearly, the leading referee in Africa is Mustapha Ghorbal and he will certainly be selected for a second World Cup this summer. The thesis for Ghorbal’s career at the top level of international football is two-fold: 1) the inexplicably bizarre performance by his compatriot and then-Algerian no1 Mehdi Abid Charef in the first leg of the 2018 African Champions League final which saw Charef completely excommunicated from all international refereeing, and, 2) good performances by Ghorbal utilising a strict style in the U20 World Cup and Afcon (both in 2019) after which he established himself. The shoe is slightly on the other foot now, as Ghorbal uses his experience to operate a more lenient approach on his matches - but, I would say never to excess. I have a feeling that FIFA were curious about just how far they could push Ghorbal (especially prior to 2022), and I can recall two matches of extreme difficulty that he was in charge of: the Saudi Cup quarterfinal AlNassr-AlHilal (February ’22) and the key Gulf Cup tie between hosts Kuwait and Qatar (December ’24). The way that Ghorbal handled the Saudi match did wind up as quite a disappointment, and together with his very shy handling of Netherlands-Ecuador (the key decision in which led to a small conflict among FIFA’s two refereeing managers) must have counted towards the relatively disappointing Qatar 2022 for Ghorbal where he didn’t handle any knockout matches. Overall, I think FIFA have a good understanding of Ghorbal’s level, a strong non-UEFA/CONMEBOL official but not a star, and will appoint him commensurate with that at the World Cup.
The rising star on the African refereeing scene in the last World Cup cycle is undoubtedly Dahane Beida from Mauritania, ‘the CAF Letexier’ who established himself impressively as a leading official on the continent. Beida, assisted much by political lobbying inside CAF but whose progress has been made coherent to merit, is a professional-looking, youthful official with very good reading of the game. Having been elevated to handle the final in the Ivorian Afcon, the Paris Olympics (he worked the final as fourth official) and Club WC (he did games with Inter Milan and Real Madrid respectively, doing well in both), established him as a regular name in FIFA circles. He will be chosen for the World Cup. I would imagine though that will see him behind Ghorbal, not only regarding experience, but also regarding overall level. I don’t think what happened in the last Afcon will count against him too much (indeed, his performances in two games prior to the chaotic quarterfinal assignment were good and very good respectively), but his performance in the high pressure Gulf Cup tie Kuwait-UAE would concern me if I were FIFA, as the difficulty of the match took eventually wore Beida down, as he gave a bogus SYC and was rightly rejected by the committee in that tournament. I think Beida, unlike the last Afcon, will not be thrown to the wolves by FIFA and his tournament as a clear ‘CAF no2’ should be a decent one.
The contest between the last eight names is much more interesting and close, not least because FIFA cannot repeat what they did in 2022: repeating names that they knew from the past. The official of this group of eight who seems in the strongest position to me might be Mohamed AMIN from Egypt. After an experience at a FIFA tournament in 2019 (U17 WC in Brazil) which I recall as being more bad than ambivalent, in the 2022-26 cycle, the Egyptian official managed to establish himself as one of the leading African officials, but one with very scant experience at FIFA level. Clearly then, the Arab Cup constituted a very important tournament for him but I must say, I think few officials enhanced their reputation as much as Amin, who did well in three Arab matches and then two more at the Afcon - many of which (I’d say all but Cameroon-Gabon) were technically challenging. Amin can be considered as like a 2020s version of Carlos Batres: an ‘honourable’, strict referee who lacks soft skills. Perhaps, this isn’t the most natural fit with modern FIFA refereeing, but due to his athletic impression and general ability to elicit respect from players (though I guess one must say that impression is only confined to Arab-African environments), I don’t think this should count against him too much. It isn’t a bad thing to have a variety of officials and styles, and I would imagine that Amin has done enough to get on the list.
A referee who has had a very good 2025 in FIFA circles, almost from nowhere as far as I’m concerned, would be Jalal JAYED from Morocco. The most interesting thing to acknowledge in Jayed’s case, is to wonder from where FIFA gained the very positive impression from him as they did: if you look at his U20 World Cup appointments, the (relative) trust in Moroccan official must have began from long before the tournament. There must have been continental matches which impressed FIFA, and out of personal curiosity I would like to know what they were! In any case, Jayed (whose style is a carbon copy of Ricci) showed to be a decent official from what I saw of the U20 World Cup, and he did well in both the CAF playoff and three matches in the last Afcon. His appointment to the Argentina-Mexico U20 quarterfinal in Chile came to me as rather surprising, but having watched the game I would say for modern standards that his performance was okay. If I’ve read this situation correctly, it is clear that Jayed has been ‘anointed’ and will thus be selected for the World Cup. If so, I think that FIFA have done well here to accelerate the process for Jayed, given his World Cup bid started much later than the other candidate CAF officials.
If one counts this as four Arab officials selected already, the regional arithmetic looks very much set against Mahmood ISMAIL from Sudan, who also had the poorest recent Afcon of all ten selected officials too: both of his two games, S.Africa-Angola and R16 Iv.Coast-BurkinaFaso, ought to have seen his performances rejected. Ismail has a quite European-like style and isn’t a bad referee per se, but I don’t think his merit is such to set him above the four aforementioned officials in any case. Recalling his Iraq-Ukraine game, I think his experience at the Paris Olympics was more ambivalent than good too. Maybe he has a chance to be selected as a reserve official, but personally it seems to me quite likely that Ismail will be excluded - and I don’t really think the last Afcon will even play much role in that.
Now, an interesting geopolitical question - to what extent does the Arab country of Somalia count as Arab (they are not Maghreb)? A certain reading of this situation would suggest that, perhaps, a World Cup spot is being fought for between two very different referees: the aforementioned Amin, and the well-known referee Omar ARTAN from Somalia. Both referees appeared in the Saudi league in the last week (and Amin gave a quite dubious red card), at least. In Artan, for whom the shoes affair I think will count zero, it seems that FIFA perhaps have a problem - the perception of Artan’s abilities are perhaps higher than the reality, he able to project the image of ‘courageous/fearless young official’ to non-refereeing onlookers. While Jayed was given a more steely vote of confidence with his U20 assignments, it seemed to me that FIFA were being more careful with Artan - but, he did do well in both Panama-Korea and the third place playoff. Artan’s case, to me, partially resembles that of Tessema in 2022 when FIFA gave the quirky Ethiopian official a wide berth, to the surprise of many at the time (his technical rating was evidently lower than his ‘popular’ consideration). Artan’s Afcon was so-so. In a boring Zambia-Mali he missed a clear penalty (corrected after OFR), but he rather struggled in Iv.Coast-Gabon and was oft-undermined by the players. It is perhaps a trickier situation than many people think but, I would say, he will be chosen as unlike Tessema, there are too many factors that ultimately run in Artan’s favour.
Due to internal machinations inside CAF, I felt quite sure that Jean-Jacques NDALA (with his two DRC linesmen) would repeat what Alioum did in 2019 and handle both the opening game and the final of the last Afcon, in an attempt to push Ndala towards refereeing games the next World Cup. The prediction proved a prescient one, but surely the Mosengo-Safari complex managed to completely botch their plan in the end, as Ndala instantly became a famous referee overnight with the events of the final (and not for good). Ndala’s whole tournament was not really a success: dubious handling of the opener including awarding a better-not-to-give-it penalty, dubious handling of Tunisia-Tanzania (with the mutiny incident!) including awarding a better-not-to-give-it penalty, and then the final where… you know the rest. Ndala’s biggest, and rather inescapable problem as a referee is that his use of body tension renders him completely unable to assure any real authority over the match and the players. As I said during the Afcon, he improved a lot in recent years, but in my eyes he is still well short of being a WC-level official. Given the political background and the long-standing Infantino-Mosengo friendship, it should be a point of quite big interest to see what FIFA do with this DRC referee in the selection. I think it would wise to select him as a reserve referee, and leave it at that. Were Ndala to referee games at the World Cup, in terms of merit it would completely unjust, and I think the FIFA refereeing operation are quite aware of that fact.
One of the last Afcon’s (few) big winners was Abongile TOM, the South African official who caused FIFA to reverse their post-Cameroon-against-Gabon decision to deselect him from the World Cup process. It doesn’t take a refereeing genius to understand that Busacca must take a not-so-positive view about the manner in which Tom handles matches, and to be fair, my view would align more with the Swiss referee manager in this instance. In Tom’s three Afcon matches, there were (22xYCs, 1xSYC, 1xRC sanctions and) two constants: a) a strict disciplinary control, and, b) a certain degree of chaos in the manner in which he managed the games. I think FIFA are right to cast scepticism about whether Tom would be a good fit for the World Cup, on account of the second factor. If you act like a law-enforcer, it is important to accompany the strict decisions with strict body language, or the number of cards you will award will be consistently very high (previously-mentioned Aranda was the best ever at this!). One must admit that, while I personally appreciated Tom’s refereeing at the last Afcon, that this is not the case in his matches. If it were up to me, I would select Tom as an (A)VAR for the next World Cup, because he was one of the stronger Afcon officials in the VAR role - he should have done the final of the last Afcon in this role.
This leaves two officials, who I would imagine are fighting for one spot. The better of these two officials is Issa SY from Senegal. Before the summer of 2025, I think it is fair to say that Sy was something like an ‘unofficial CAF no3’, and his selection to the Club WC seemed to ascertain that. Then, an off-field incident occurred at that tournament which seems to have damaged the Senegalese referee’s World Cup chances. The details of this are now well-publicised, but the extent to which this counts against Sy is unclear. What I would say is that Issa Sy’s Afcon, in the end, didn’t really count much in his favour. Sy is a good referee, but I think there is something in his demeanour which players consider a bit supercilious and irksome. This played out not only in the now famous Algeria-Nigeria, but also Zambia-Morocco. If the penalty in that quarterfinal was more of an error by the VAR (more on him shortly), then the lack of balancing in disciplinary sanctions would be a much more substantive cause for concern. All of this means that my feeling is that FIFA will, probably, leave Issa Sy alone and not select him for the World Cup.
The affair of Bayern-Auckland opened up a potential World Cup slot then for a referee who seemed likely to be out of the race, namely Pierre Ghislain ATCHO from Gabon. Atcho, who was stupidly appointed VAR for both the Algeria-Nigeria quarterfinal and even the final of the Afcon, was selected for the Arab Cup in addition to the AFCON - so like Amin was on a two-month long international refereeing trip. Atcho, excellent in fitness and movement, presented skills mostly at the level of decent in his two Arab Cup games, and his first two Afcon games (Algeria-Sudan and R16 Egypt-Benin). I was surprised to see the Gabon official appointed to referee the Egypt-Senegal semifinal, but it must be said that actually he did rather well in this match, and showed hitherto unpresent management and soft skills. I think this will not have gone unnoticed in FIFA circles, either. It was very clear by how Atcho was managed in the Arab Cup, that FIFA wanted to ‘create’ a referee who had the possibility and palmares to be selected for the World Cup. If Sy is now persona non grata for the WC, then I think both FIFA and Atcho himself have done enough for him to squeeze into the final tournament by a very small margin.
Finally, unrelated to the WC but perhaps still worth writing about, a small review of impressions for the non-preselected referees at the last Afcon. Benbraham: WC VAR, emergency referee because Gamouh is ill (and has our best wishes!), did okay in Senegal-DRC, very good with players rapport but weak on calls
Bouh: take the airpods out… promising young referee, did well, unlucky to be stuck on one match
Heeralall: not impressed, his biggest strength is ascertaining authority from his style, but way too many mistakes/missed YCs in his second game, Uganda-DRC
Houngnandande: weak official who with Adjovi out of the committee, might struggle to maintain his stay at the top CAF level; second worst ref at the tournament
Kechaf: excellent in fitness/movement (like Mazic), but too weak on calls, he didn’t do well in Zimbabwe-S.Africa and think we may not see him at next Afcon
Kpan: his match was quite difficult (Angola-Egypt), some weaknesses in acceptance/calls but generally quite promising ref, will be back at next Afcon
Laryea: ridiculous appointment to the semifinal considering his abilities, too unpredictable calls but he is an okay referee for mid-to-lower tier Afcon level
Maarouf: he was actually used quite well by CAF as Egyptian no2, did well in Eq.Guinea-BurkinaFaso and was rightly rewarded with Algeria-DRC, which he did fine
Mahamat: I must say, he is actually a very good referee, kind of official you would see in the 1990s; but unfortunately his RC was ridiculous and tarnished everything
Melki: decent Mahgreb referee, not good enough for WC-level, his performance in Gabon-Mozambique was decent
Mebiame: only one game for him, decent referee but not the best on technical accuracy, especially given Tunisia-Uganda was pretty easy
Mefire: sorry, overrated referee; too many bizarre calls and unable to properly interact with players give a baffoonish impression, even if his fitness is very good
Nabadda: this referee would be took weak to reach ‘Level4’ in England and it is ridiculous that for tokenism, she attends the Afcon; at least, they chose her game well
Ndabihawenimana: he actually got better since his ‘star’ Afcon in 2023, good card choices but clearly not good enough to do a game like Egypt-S.Africa and not helped by terrible VAR-ing by Nyagrowa, was given a dead rubber and nothing else after that
Nkounkou: a talented referee(!), Sudan-Eq.Guinea was always going to be messy, very unkind appointment, but all things considered he coped well; strong, tough guy who needs some coaching on calls but in a few years could be a very good referee
Traoré: an honourable man in terms of how he presented himself on the FoP, clearly big deficiencies in his movement/soft skills but generally, given the difficulty of his two matches, he showed up well and can be proud of his tournament
Uwikunda: very impressed with him, should clearly be on the radar of FIFA for pre-2030 events; UEFA-style, coped really well with extremely tough game Benin-Senegal, he would have deserved the semifinal more than Laryea (but they did well not to sacrifice the Rwandan)
Waweru: a bit like Mefire, a fit-but-a-bit-baffoonish kind of referee (but better than Mefire), struggled in Angola-Zimbabwe but clung onto control, overall Senegal-Cameroon turned out mostly okay
CONCACAF
100 percenters: Ismail ELFATH, Cesar RAMOS, Tori PENSO, Drew FISCHER, Ivan BARTON
The analysis for Concacaf, the continent in which the World Cup will be host, divides very aptly for the purposes of our analysis into the three regions that the confederation encompasses. The self-evidently most irrelevant region (with regards main referees at least) are the Caribbean countries, represented only by Oshane NATION from Jamaica. Nation was originally not included in the final seminar, and was only added at short notice. The Jamaican, cast in a very typical Concacaf image as a great athlete, is much too weak a referee to handle matches at the World Cup, and I’m skeptical if he will even be chosen as a reserve; Jack Warner days these are not. The way in which FIFA/Concacaf managed to compensate the countries who are not in the big ten of North (3) or Central (7) America at Qatar 2022, was to tag a linesman, as AR2, to the three Central American crews. Given the evident rejection for repeatedly making mistakes to the Surinamese assistant attached to Barton, Zachari Zeegelaar, perhaps FIFA will want to avoid that scenario in 2026 and will instead create a full reserve trio to be headed by Nation. The fact that the Jamaican was only included at very late notice would suggest the contrary, but we will see.
If you take as axiomatic that all three host nations will have a main referee crew at the World Cup, that there will be a female referee in the tournament and take the original slot allocation of six as writ, then the race between four referees from Central America to reach 2026 is extremely tight. Increasing the Concacaf quota to seven, as appears rather likely to me, would take the heat somewhat out the competition. In any case, the leading referee from this region who surely will not be sweating on the final list announcement too much is Ivan BARTON from El Salvador. Barton took advantage of a revolution in Concacaf refereeing instigated in the aftermath of WC2018 by the controversial referees manager Brian Hall, and rose fast beyond expectations with strong performances in international events during 2019. More will be written about the Brian Hall revolution later.
As for Barton himself, his trajectory is a rather interesting case study for FIFA refereeing in the past ten/fifteen years or so. It seemed to me that the technically strong Salvadorian official decided that beginning from his first game of the last WC, Germany-Japan, he would immediately alter his style to cohere to the ‘be an actor’ trend inside FIFA. It was interesting to see this play out in real time, because I wouldn’t say this was an especially organic or logical shift for the relatively slight referee from El Salvador. He did well at the World Cup, showing the ability to navigate medium-to-highish difficulty matches, in managing to get the tricky Brazil-Switzerland tie over the line. From the matches I’ve seen, the famously frenetic Salvadorian official has improved his ‘FIFA style’ a lot since the QatarWC/post-QatarWC period: he contravened the absolutely poor impression from 2023’s Wydad-AlHilal with two good performances in very challenging Club WC games, Flamengo-Chelsea and Inter-Fluminense.
Certainly, I would say the doubts about Barton (his ability to retain control over both the match and also his own emotions) are now much outweighed by the quality of his decisions on the FoP and ability to solve technically-challenging matches. Barton is only thirty-five years old, and if he could bring an element of a referee like Vitor Melo Pereira into his way of handling games (the Portuguese not at the top in terms of charisma or even calls but who made a big career by an impeccable ability to always stay calm and retain a poker face on the FoP), then he could surely improve further in the next ten years. I think Barton is a very likeable referee and I wish him well for the World Cup.
One of the most dramatic refereeing matches that I can remember in the last few years which nobody will have registered was the opening game of the 2025 Arab Cup between Tunisia and Syria. Juan Gabriel CALDERON from Costa Rica was the referee. This game was significant for a number of reasons. First, I’m quite sure that it would not have gone unnoticed internally that it was the same match (Tunisia-Syria) at the previous edition of the Arab Cup which had two very serious consequences, one of much wider relevance than the other: a) the match was mishandled by the chaotic Mexican official Fernando Hernandez Gomez, costing him a shot at the Qatar WC, and, b) the utterly extreme time-wasting tactics by the Syrian team which set in motion a series of events that resulted in the now-famous approach to compensating lost time at that WC itself. Remember, that FIFA had instituted a rule specifically for this Arab Cup in 2025 which instructed that players who left the field of play having been inspected by a trainer would have to remain off the FoP for a statutory period of two minutes. This rule was not applicable for the playoff matches, so Calderon was to be the first referee to implement this guideline in the tournament. It was also very visible that the referees were under pressure by FIFA, even notwithstanding this specific rule, to maximise the effective playing time of their matches.
100 percenters: Jesus VALENZUELA, Wilton SAMPAIO, Facundo TELLO.
The analysis for CONMEBOL fits well into three themes: 1) an analysis of the three ‘100%-ers’, 2) the battle for second in Argentina and Brazil, and, 3) contenders for the remaining places. So then: in my judgement, the best referee in South America is Jesus Valenzuela (ven). The steady and continual progress of this official from one of the smaller CONMEBOL countries throughout the 2020s is much credit to him, because his rise is one that he himself managed to force by hard work and quality on the field of play. I would argue that his ascension is, also, one of two very specific cases where FIFA themselves can also take great credit as Valenzuela is quite evidently an excellent apprentice of their coaching and way of refereeing (reference to the other will follow in a later text).
As one needs it to, the ball would appear to have rolled kindly in certain instances for the Venezuelan official: presumably rated behind compatriot Alexis Herrera in 2019 (Herrera was a main ref at U20WC and JV was VAR), at the Copa America of that summer, Herrera performed very poorly in a difficult match (Colombia-Qatar) whereas Valenzuela was delegated a more discreet clash (Ecuador-Japan) which featured a small handful of robust tackles but which as far as I remember was handled well; Valenzuela was appointed fourth official for the ‘South American Europa League’ final in January 2021 when the main referee got Covid, JV stepped in and refereed the game assuredly; and, the match where I began to take notice of him as a big name, he handled one of the most difficult games of the Covid Copa America (another tournament where he was on the list initially as a VAR!), the Argentina-Colombia semifinal, in a careful and good manner. ‘The cream ultimately rises to the top’, the adage goes, and I think that is the correct lens through which the view this series of events.
Valenzuela was one of the big winners of the Qatar WC, with his adequate handling of the rather sterile England-Usa group stage tie and then good performance in the R16 match between France and Poland; remember, it is always a big compliment to a referee when, as a non-UEFA official, he is appointed by FIFA to a match in which a European official would be eligible in confederational neutrality. I think Valenzuela has become a better referee since the last WC. He has, from a position of not being the most naturally charismatic person during matches, developed into an excellent player manager with his gestures and facial expressions on the field of play. Perhaps, one could have had doubts about authentic this all was, but I must say that I’m now very sold on Valenzuela and consider him to be the ‘real deal’. His excellent performance in a game that would have been too challenging and defeated a likely majority of the referees at the next WC, the final of the UAE Super Cup in December, was a great personal triumph for the Venezuelan official and one that I would hope did not go unnoticed at Zurich.
Tello is a very good referee, but it seems difficult to judge the exact nature of what he can achieve and the extent of how big/difficult matches he can be assigned. At the Club WC, he did R.Madrid-AlHilal in the group stage and Dortmund-Monterrey in the R16, and was fourth official for the final. If that tournament was perhaps a little ‘below expectation’ for Tello, then the last World Cup where he reached the quarterfinals was probably ‘above expectation’ in equal measure. I think even his supporters (and I would consider myself generally among them) would admit that he is no Loustau/Pitana. Tello fits extremely well into the mould of ‘Europe vs. Other problem solver’, because he himself could quite easily be a UEFA referee with his style that Rosetti was/is so fond of. His three appointments at Qatar 2022 and two at the Club WC all cohere to this role. I would imagine that his World Cup, for which he is sure to be selected, will continue on those lines.
The battle for second, supposing it exists and that there will not be as many as three referees from Brazil and Argentina, is more interesting in one country than the other. It seems that in the Lusitanic country, the ruling has already been made in favour of Ramon ABATTI. Having refereed at the 2023 edition of the U20 World Cup, in the last Olympic Games, handling two group stage matches (Morocco-Iraq and one women’s fixture, the latter featuring an OFR!), was considered enough to select Abatti as the referee of the final at Paris 2024. Abatti’s performance in that prestigious and very exciting game was decent. The thirty-six year old official is, crucially, well-liked by his compatroiot Seneme, and would appear to have his spot in the World Cup sewn up. My view on Abatti is quite steadfast - he is, at least for the moment, (very) overrated. In UEFA stakes, I can’t really see any scope for him to be promoted beyond the 1st Category. It is clear that while Abatti has learnt well from FIFA’s ‘be an actor’ training, he often struggles to arouse any respect from players and it always seems to me that gaining acceptance on the FoP is quite an uphill struggle for him. Abatti doesn’t really compensate for that with excellent calls either, his decisions are mostly in the region of decent-to-good. FIFA have bet quite a lot on him, and based on the merits of his performances on the pitch, it isn’t totally apparent to me why. Abatti does have qualities, a strong palmares (as said, his Olympic final performance deserves a passing grade and he reached the quarterfinals of the Club WC) and generally I wouldn’t begrudge him a WC place overall: but the Brazilian’s rather benign and seemingly preordained road to his current status can be contrasted quite sharply with Valenzuela.
The apparently strong positions of both Sampaio and Abatti, if you take as a maxim that Brazil will be capped at two referees, would seem to leave the Qatar WC official Raphael CLAUS out in the metaphorical cold. However I must say that the absence of Claus, who does not enjoy the same Seneme support as the two aforementioned referees, would be no great loss for this year’s World Cup. It seems the goal of this official, much too often, is to referee matches awarding the least number of yellow cards as humanly possible - this is set apart even from FIFA’s approach, and thus had the remarkable consequence that Claus behaved at the last World Cup like old referees used to, acting more strict than usual in order to avoid the censure of FIFA. I know that Claus is reflexively quite well rated, and indeed optically he comes across as a seious/good referee, but I would stress from my perspective this referee has shown jarring limitations on a diverse number of occasions. For instance, to pick the most recent episode that I can recall: in the Saudi league last month, Claus only saw fit to award a yellow card to a player from Al-Hilal who headbutted an opponent (the opponent was also cautioned). I think his appointment to the final of the last Copa America, that tournament run not by Seneme but another former referee (Cacares of Paraguay), was an ex ante compensation for Claus’s apparently falling consideration inside FIFA and likely exclusion from the next World Cup. All things considered I think Claus is probably a slightly better referee than Abatti (at time of writing), but certainly not so much better to say that he (Claus) deserves a second World Cup, especially as the first did not go especially well in FIFA’s view.
The race for segundo puesto in Argentina, between Dario HERRERA and Yael FALCON PEREZ, appears much much closer. In apparent confirmation of this tightness, both Argentine officials were flown to the United Arab Emirates in order to, between them, referee the semifinals of an important domestic cup competition last weekend. They say in tennis that the best matches often feature a ‘contrast of styles’, and that is absolutely true in this Argentine contest too: Falcon is a typical modern-optic referee, whereas Herrera looks very old school. The appointments to those UAE cup games went as follows: technically-difficult top clash to Herrera, easier match featuring a lower-division side (whose manager is Pirlo) to Falcon. The nuanced reading of those assignments would cohere to my own view - that Falcon Perez is ahead, would be a better choice, and indeed is simply a better referee. If one wanted to write something excessively harsh, one could say of Dario Herrera that he is ‘a poorer iteration of Hector Baldassi’. Herrera, like Claus, is not a bad referee per se, but I don’t think either the Argentine’s calls or leadership style on the field of play are particularly excellent. Herrera’s performance last Saturday was generally okay, but not more than that. The big weakness of Falcon Perez, besides some weird incidents in the Club WC which could possibly count against him, would be his tendency to become too passive in his matches - it seems to me that he has mostly overcome this negative aspect. I was fortunate enough to watch one of Falcon’s Paris 2024 matches in the stadium, and he performed convincingly on that occasion. Herrera seems a good man, and it will surely hurt him a lot were he to be omitted from the final WC list, but I believe that will be the case. Finally, in a manner similar to Claus’ CA final, it seems that the two CONMEBOL club finals last year were also delegated in a compensatory manner to referees who were not expected to be selected for the World Cup (sud: Maza; lib: Herrera). We will see!
Probably the CONMEBOL official who had the most positive 2025 in FIFA competitions is the Chilean Cristian GARAY. Garay was the only name on the Copa America 2024 referees list who I knew nothing of, and one can guess that he won a lot of plaudits for his performances in the CONMEBOL U20 championship of the previous year (’23), when the referee from Chile handled the de facto final. As one of the most inexperienced referees at the last Copa America, Garay was logically appointed for one of the smaller group stage clashes, Ecuador-Jamaica. The match in fact did not go well for him though - the Chilean official was rejected by CONMEBOL (see here: https://youtu.be/Elks_ASRDPs). I wasn’t following the Copa America in great detail, but it seemed to me like Garay was likely to have blown his chance to become a top referee in South America. However, quite rightly, one incident should not be enough to derail a career. Clearly Garay was doing something right, because he was among the most surprising of the twenty-nine selected main referees for the Club WC. According to the CONMEBOL appointments, Garay’s inclusion probably didn’t make much sense, and the absence of his compatriot Piero Maza would have looked surprising.
However, and I’m trying to formulate this in the politest possible way - particularly given his relative lack of quality (Maza tries to act like a big name but in reality is not one), I think choosing Maza for the World Cup in 2026 would probably have been more trouble than it was worth. FIFA themselves apparently came to the same conclusion. In the Club WC, Garay was rather unfairly thrown straight in at the deep end by his initial assignment to Miami-Porto (not especially convincing performance), but in his work at the Arab Cup, I became convinced that FIFA had made a very good choice and that Garay is an able, WC-level referee. I guess much was on the line for the Chilean in the tricky quarterfinal match at that tournament, Syria-Morocco, but the manner in which Garay handled this game was actually very good in both technical and leadership aspects. I think he is very close to being a ‘100-percenter’ for the next World Cup. The cases of Garay and Jayed, do pay much compliment to FIFA’s ability to ‘scout’ referees, in spite of the (not insignificant!) number of regrettable things in their way of working nowadays. For this, they should be given sincere plaudits.
In 2002, FIFA were able to call upon five (and it would have been six had Larrionda not been torpedoed back home) genuinely high class referees from South America who could handle very challenging matches. Nowadays, the situation in the Latine continent is significantly more modest, but after Garay, there is still one more name who can seem to be quite sure about an impending selection for the World Cup. A referee whose position is near identical to the Chilean is the Uruguayan official Gustavo TEJERA. If one imagines a graph with an x-axis ‘prestigiousness of the appointment’ and a y-axis ‘difficulty of the appointment’ - if you are delegated a clash which falls into the top left of the graph, you ought be worried; but, being given a fixture in the bottom right is a sign that you are liked by the people making the assignments. New Caledonia-Jamaica, the key Intercontinental playoff semifinal but which in reality will be close to a non-event, falls very firmly into this bottom-right area and would seem to make clear FIFA’s intention to take Tejera to the World Cup. Thus, one can conclude that Tejera was a big winner of the last U20 World Cup in Chile, where he was appointed to referee a semifinal. In terms of style, the Uruguayan official can be described as ‘Rapallini 2.0’; I’m not completely sold on Tejera, but it seems that FIFA are convinced and he will be selected for the World Cup. Finally, if Garay’s can be viewed as an ‘anti-Maza’ vote, then it would seem that with Tejera’s consideration, FIFA have admitted what was surely quite obvious to most serious onlookers even before the Qatar WC - Andres MATONTE simply does not have the requisite quality to referee at the highest level of international football, and his inclusion at all in 2022 was one of the most bizarre in recent World Cup history. I see Matonte’s chances to return to the World Cup in 2026 as near zero.
Preempting the selection of Valenzuela, Sampaio, Tello, Bra2, Arg2, Garay and Tejera would give one space left for an eighth CONMEBOL referee as per the slot allocations, and leave three referees fighting for it. They are: Andres ROJAS, Juan Gabriel BENITEZ and Kevin ORTEGA. Rojas from Colombia, would seem to have been decisively struck down by his confederation in a surreal manner. Colombia’s WC candidate official misread an incident in a Libertadores quarterfinal during September last year between Flamengo RdJ and Estudiantes de La Plata, which resulted in him awarding a second yellow card incorrectly to the Brazilian team. It seems this call made some important (non-refereeing) people really angry, in the same way that they were angered by Andres Cunha continually refereeing games that Brazil teams lost, and apparently they set sight on trying to destroy Rojas’ career. A really strange sequence then followed: CONMEBOL announced that Andres Rojas had been withdrawn from the U20 World Cup. As the event was not run by CONMEBOL they didn’t have the power to action this punishment, and FIFA refused to abide by the command. However, when Rojas arrived at the tournament, his inclusion was purely perfunctory, because he then didn’t feature in any game at the U20 WC at all (not even fourth official or AVAR).
CONMEBOL, in trying to fail a referee for one singular incident, behaved disgracefully. Events similar to this did also happen in the past, but there is a very modern (and sour) flavour to this whole affair. To add the impression of chaos in the Rojas file, he was not initially included in the South American seminar, but then (like Tom, Nation and Hernandez) was included at late notice. Rojas is a decent, not outstanding referee (especially in terms of charisma/management) and I don’t think he is a great loss to the next World Cup - but it is impossible not to feel sorry for the way in which he was treated by his own confederation. Perhaps there is a small chance for him, helped by Ruiz, to be selected as a reserve referee?
If one can discount Rojas, then the battle for octavo would look to be between Benitez (par) and Ortega (per). One could write a long story on the topic of Paraguayan referees in the time of Leoz and Alarcon, but there is now a very curious modern chapter on the issue. The story, as I understand it, goes like this: after Seneme, the person who was appointed to do Rosetti’s job in South America was the former top 2010s referee, Enrique Caceres from Paraguay. At a certain time, due to a personal conflict, Caceres refused to appoint any referees from his country to matches in CONMEBOL competitons (like Velasco and the Spaniards but for a much longer period of time). The Paraguayan association protested to FIFA, but were told it was a confederational matter. Then, enter stage left Juan Gabriel Benitez, who turned out to be a decent-ish but unspectacular law-enforcer style official. To fulfil Paraguay’s spot at the last Copa America, he was selected as a referee. Benitez refereed only one match (Uruguay-Bolivia) but reserved in three, including a quarterfinal and then even the grand final itself with Claus; the nature of the latter appointment aroused my interest. Then, apparently from nowhere, Benitez was given the sonorous qualifier Argentina-Colombia, and appointed to the Club WC, where he only did one match. What makes this affair so interesting is by even a cursory glance at Benitez’s style, one can be almost certain that this is not a recommendation by Busacca, but a political arrangement decided above and mostly forced upon him. I was very interested therefore to see how Benitez would perform at the Arab Cup, for which he was nominated in the autumn of last year.
Benitez handled four matches at the Qatar-hosted tournament, and didn’t really manage to distinguish himself with his refereeing. One has to understand these test events, like the old Confederations Cup, as such - the appointments in them are not an absolute rating of merit but are designed to make a judgement about the ability of the officials in them. I’m sure that many referees were quite pleased to have avoided the Saudi-Jordan semifinal designation, as that game promised deep challenges for the referee (as it happened, weren’t that many foul duels in the game and thus it wasn’t remarkably challenging). But: I think even FIFA would agree that giving Benitez a semifinal, after having circa Bahrain-Sudan violated the now well-known criteria of two evitable interventions -> rejected, was unfortunate and better avoided. The official from Paraguay did referee Saudi-Jordan adequately, and was clearly supported by Busacca with the game’s most dramatic incident, when he (and the Uruguayan VAR, Garcia) didn’t award a penalty for handball in a quite unique incident. Busacca and FIFA were absolutely right in this instance and it is good they didn’t cave to baying of the Arab world, who were unanomously convinced that a penalty should have been awarded. Benitez, amassing four interventions during the competition, predictably featured often in the appearance on Qatari TV of Busacca and Collina in the days before the Intercontinental and Arab finals took place. The two Italian-speaking managers only talked through obvious situations and praised the officials, but just about the only criticism of their referees let slip when talking about the violent conduct in Bahrain-Sudan: the Swiss manager (rightly) criticised Benitez for showing a ‘lack of alertness’ in that incident.
I have a partly sympathetic view towards the Paraguayan ref due to his style, and the Arab Cup should have clarified the following: Benitez is a mostly decent referee who can handle normal and sometimes even quite challenging matches in an adequate manner, but especially in terms of cleverness and management, he would definitely fall short of a WC-level referee, in usual circumstances. I think the optimal solution would be to select Benitez as a reserve referee, but perhaps the suppositional political diktat renders that scenario insufficent. In any case: Benitez’s probable rival certainly had a fortuitous end to 2025, Kevin Ortega. The youthful-looking official from Peru was called up as emergency referee for the U20 World Cup in Chile, due to a remarkable number of referees who became unavailable (Al-Kaf, Scharer, Sanchez and Rojas). Ortega reached the quarterfinals of that event, and his appointment to a very key Saudi league match a couple weeks ago at a time when many borderline candidates were being watched over, is seemingly irrefutable evidence that the Peruvian is in with a reasonable shot at 2026. It had seemed to me that Ortega, a Qatar WC reserve referee whose ability seems to hard to conclusively determine, had blown himself up with his notoriously poor handling of the Uruguay-Usa tie at the last Copa America. Maybe if not for all those absences at the U20 in Chile, it would have. I’ve watched a number of WC candidate-refereed matches in the Saudi league in the last two months, but by far the most amazing and authoritive was the AlQadisiyah-AlAhli match two weeks ago which Ortega was placed in charge of.
The level of difficulty was very high, bordering on extreme. I think you can view Ortega’s performance in two ways: an assessor in the stands could certainly offer the Peru official a significant number of areas for development in the way in which he handled the game; he was often undermined by players, gave warnings with no clear stepped approach or target, offered a carte blanche on not retreating, and barely managed to assure match control. However, another perspective could be: adhering very well to FIFA’s vision for refereeing (contra Benitez), Ortega showed to be a modern-styled, athletic official who managed to stay afloat in a match of remarkably high-difficulty. So, one could extrapolate that if he will be in charge of games that are lower-difficulty than this extreme Saudi task, then Ortega will still be able to referee them adequately. Personally, I think you should be very sceptical about choosing a referee for the World Cup who has technical weaknesses to such a significant degree. However, Benitez situation dependent, it seems like Ortega may just have done enough to squeeze over the line and become the first Peruvian official to referee at the World Cup since 1998.
Well, Mikael, if you want to conclude this analysis with UEFA and OFC, people will be very happy to read. It seems you kept the European confederation as very last one, like exactly FIFA does during the preselection ;)
ReplyDeleteYes, I will be really happy to read it. I know it takes time to write, so whenever you have a moment, no rush.
DeleteChefren, is your team preparing anything special for us for the FIFA World Cup on the blog — maybe some big analytical articles? Thanks.
DeleteThanks so much
ReplyDelete@Mikael, great analysis as always! Just a couple points.
ReplyDeleteI know you didn't actually say this, but some people might think it's implied that Penso cannot pass the men's fitness test. That's not true. She passes it every year for MLS and already did so again this spring. The Brazil failure was an anomaly.
On Angeles, I don't know the *whole* story but I do know he himself was a compromise or late pick for the 1994 tournament. The US had very good pedigree/referees in the 80s, relatively speaking (NASL) helped and, indeed, 1990 was a huge race between Bratsis and Mauro for a bit (with some saying Mauro won out because it was in Italy, not Greece). But 1992-1993 was a lull and USSF/CONCACAF sort of had to scramble to find the "right" referee. Angeles was undoubtedly the weakest #1 FIFA that the USA has had since 1980 or so. It was unfortunate that it coincided with a home World Cup.
Finally--and consistent with one of your first points about bloated lists and the travel issues--there are some rumors (or maybe just hope?) that Dickerson will be named as a reserve official. Exactly as you implied, having some people at this tournament who just do 5-6 reserve assignments in individual regions would A) help FIFA politically, B) set some 2030 referees up well and C) greatly take the pressure off the top referees, who would travel less and have no reserve assignments that way. We'll see if there's credibility to that rumor soon enough!