Zombie Collina has no patience for your diving, Didier.
The thirty referees who will handle South Africa’s World Cup matches were announced over the weekend.
And yes, “handle” is being used in a punny sense here as Swedish whistleman Martin Hansson is the most controversial inclusion. Hansson missed Thierry Henry’s clear handball in France’s victory over Ireland that secured their place in South Africa, an event we covered extensively at PhillySoccerPage. The full list is after the jump, courtesy of worldcupblog.org.
Two Mexican referees will run World Cup diagonals, including Marco Rodriguez. Wikipedia says this about the Mexican ref: “He is nicknamed “Chiquidrácula” by the Mexican press due to his resemblance to a childish image of Count Dracula.”
The United States was shut out. Should the MLS be represented? By whom?
Another notable inclusion is Roberto Rosetti of Italy, who is routinely assigned to the top Serie A matches and routinely turns in mediocre performances. If there are any Serie A fans reading this, give us your thoughts on Rosetti in the comments. And if you believe that his stellar reputation is built in part on his emphatic free kick gesturing and sprinting to the spot of a foul, just write, “Here, here!” or its Italian equivalent.
Europe
Olegario Benquerenca, Portugal
Massimo Busacca, Switzerland
Frank De Bleekere, Belgium
Martin Hansson, Sweden
Viktor Kassai, Hungary
Stephane Lannoy, France
Roberto Rosetti, Italy
Wolfgang Stark, Germany
Alberto Undiano Mallenco
Howard Webb, England
South America
Carlos Amarilla, Paraguay
Hector Baldassi, Argentina
Jorge Larrionda, Uruguay
Pablo Pozo, Chile
Oscar Ruiz, Colombia
Carlos Simon, Brazil
Asia
Khalil Al Ghamdi, Saudi Arabia
Ravshan Irmatov, Uzbekistan
Subkhiddin Mohd Salleh, Malaysia
Yuichi Nishimura, Japan
Africa
Mohamed Benouza, Algeria
Koman Coulibaly, Mali
Jerome Damon, South Africa
Eddy Maillet, Seychelles
North, Central America and Caribbean
Joel Aguilar, El Salvador
Benito Archundia, Mexico
Carlos Batres, Guatemala
Marco Rodriguez, Mexico
Australia and South Pacific
Michael Hester, New Zealand
Peter O’Leary, New Zealand
Howard Webb? I used to really rate him as a ref, but the last year has not been good for him, in my opinion, though he’s showed signs of life recently. Better certainly than Phil Dowd, Mark Clattenberg, or Mike Dean, the other guys who seem to get a lot of the big English games. And he’s younger/fitter than other possibilities, I suppose.
@Jer
I had a whole separate post about Howard Webb and how the FA has pushed him into the big games. He handles the games well but he has such a noticeable history of missing things in the box! It’s like he calls a different game in the penalty box than he calls outside of it. While many refs do this subconsciously, Webb is on a whole different level (and I’m not just referring to the Fabregas handball in your Gunners’ win over Liverpool. There have been numerous instances over the past few years. The Tottenham/Man U debacle got Webb dropped to the Championship for a week.
I think that after the Graham Poll triple yellow in WC2006, the FA felt they needed another referee in their stable who seemed “elite”, and Webb was the only choice. They probably wanted Clattenburg but he was too young (and now he’s just returning from 8 month suspension for some financial issues).
Bottom line: England doesn’t have any refs who are garnering the same international respect that Collina had or that Rosetti has now. It’s too bad because there really isn’t much for Italian refs to do besides making diving calls and gesturing dismissively at Pippo Inzaghi.
Thanks for showing up these names!