Refereeing Stats at World Cup - Chapter 1

We are pleased to present a feature prepared by our reader Emmanuel, a journey through some unusual statistics ahead of the World Cup, which is about to begin. 

In this first  we will have a look at how appointments were made across confederations, what the required ‘experience’ to be appointed in the knock-out stages was and how the burning topic of confederation neutrality was handled in the latest editions.

The visual focuses on the composition of the appointments by confederation. If we look at the bottom bar chart showing composition by tournament, we see how from 1970 the proportion of UEFA referees has been constantly decreasing until 2002. Afterwards it has been pretty much steady until 2022, with the exception of 2006, where the aftermath of the 2002 controversies seems to have pushed committee to appoint referees from a reduced pool and predominantly coming from the confederations that had the strongest power and reputation. In that edition UEFA and CONMEBOL referees were over-represented compared to all other World Cups of the new millennium. There has also been steady practice since 2010 to include an OFC referee to handle one game at group stage.

If we look at appointments by stage since 1986 – until 1982 the format was different and cannot be easily compared – we notice how UEFA and CONMEBOL together make up over 60% of group stage games and about 75% of the appointments at knock-out stage, with the exception of the 3rd place game, which has been assigned to an AFC referee in 50% of cases since 1986.

The Appointments at knock-out phase chart shows the individual games at knock-out stages since 1994 and individually labels each game with the color of the referee confederation. Most of you will be able to remember the names without even checking the labels! 

When talking about referee experience strictly at World Cup games, the simplest indicators are two: the number of games refereed at the same competition and the total number of games handled at World Cup, including previous editions.

The first table Game count at tournament by stage shows the game count for each referee appointment at the tournament once they reached that specific game. As example, in the 2022 Round of 16 all referees had already 2 games during the group stage, with the exception of two that only had one. One of them is S. Marciniak, who was later appointed for the final as his 3rd game of the tournament. Both N. Pitana in 2018 and H. Elizondo in 2006 got their final as 5th game at the tournament, while it is equally remarkable that B. Archundia in 2006 and R. Irmatov in 2010 handled a semi-final after 4 previous games at the same tournament.

Looking at this chart, it seems that after significantly increasing the number of games required to handle KO stage games in 2006, FIFA has reduced the number of appointments needed, getting closer to pre-2006 level again. The reason could be reducing the chances of incidents and controversies for the referees that are projected for the final stages, somehow protecting them, or maybe it was simply assessed as too much on a physical perspective to handle up to 5 games within a few weeks, significantly impacting the referee’s fitness in the final games. We will see how this will change at 2026 World Cup with the introduction of one extra stage at knock-out phase, with 16 referees needed to handle Round of 32 games.

In Average game count at tournament by stage we see the same information summarized by tournament and stage, again we see the clear change in color between 2002 and 2006, and the average number of games handled by referees at KO stage gradually decreasing again from 2006 to 2022. We also see how the peculiar appointment of the 3rd place game to a referee with only one previous game in 2022, has two precedents in 1986 and 1994.

The other two charts on the right side focus on the presence of the appointed referees at previous world cups. We can see that in recent times, 2014 was the tournament with least referees with previous World Cup games – over 80% were at their debut while only about 55% in 2018 and 1990. This is also reflected in the appointments, for instance all 4 referees at quarter final in 2018 had participated to 2014 World Cup. We also notice that the two latest finalists were a ‘safe pair of hands’ for FIFA, having refereed already 8 games (N. Pitana) and 4 games (S. Marciniak) before their final appointment, across two tournaments. This only happened once more in recent times to a certain P. Collina, who handled the 2002 final after being selected in 1998 as well.

Additional note: this section has considered “previous World Cup experience” only as being appointed as main referee in a previous World Cup game. Presence as selected referee without being appointed as main (e.g. 4th official or additional assistant referee) was not included.

Finally, let’s dig into the confederation neutrality topic, which has been discussed several times on the blog. The charts are pretty self-explanatory: while confederation neutrality was regularly broken with UEFA officials, it rarely was the case with any other confederation. Never in CAF and only once in CONCACAF (E. Codesal from Mexico handled Italy-USA at group stage in 1990), it was broken three times in CONMEBOL in the past 10 World Cup tournaments. In 1986, R. Filho from Brazil refereed the final between West Germany and Argentina, in 1994 J. Cadena from Colombia handled a semi-final between Brazil and Sweden, while more recently in 2018 the Argentinian N. Pitana was in charge of a quarter-final involving Uruguay against France.

The matter is somehow more complex with AFC, since before 2010 Australian referees were part of OFC instead of AFC but for the scope of this analysis I included Australia as part of AFC, which impacts on confederation neutrality. However, there are still cases of proper AFC referees appointed to other AFC teams. The implicit rule seems to be to avoid referees from the same geographical area but to allow other combinations, such as referees from Far Eastern countries allowed to referee teams from Middle Eastern countries and vice versa.

Below is the complete list of broken neutrality in AFC: 

1986: South Korea – Bulgaria (F. Al-Shanar, Saudi Arabia, group stage)

1990: Yugoslavia – United Arab Emirates (S. Takada, Japan, group stage)

2002: South Korea – Turkey (S. Al-Fadhli, UAE, 3rd place)

** Australia listed as OFC at the time **

2006: Iran – Angola (M. Shield, Australia, group stage) 

2006: Tunisia – Saudi Arabia (M. Shield, Australia, group stage)

2014: Australia – Spain (N. Shukralla, Bahrain, group stage)

2014: South Korea – Belgium (B. Williams, Australia, group stage)

As for UEFA, we look at data in % of total games instead of the absolute values, since we have a much bigger pool of games compared to any other confederation. Some of you will already know that FIFA committed to avoiding one-sided confederation neutrality in 2010, meaning that UEFA referees were only appointed to UEFA teams if both of them belonged to the UEFA area. Basically, they were only allowed to referee UEFA vs UEFA teams or non-UEFA vs non-UEFA teams and never a UEFA vs non-UEFA team clash. This was not the case in any other tournament since 1986. In 2022 the number of games (10) where neutrality was broken was less than in 2018 (13) and 2014 (14), we will see what will happen in 2026, but with more games to be played and a higher proportion of non-UEFA teams compared to previous tournaments I would expect that FIFA will break confederation neutrality less frequently this year.