Another World Cup Refereeing Record

July 3rd, 2006 | by: WC Bob |

The teams from CONCACAF didn’t fare too well on the pitch this World Cup, but one of the region’s referees has gained distinction. Mexico’s Benito Archundia has been given the assignment of refereeing the Germany and Italy semifinal match on Tuesday. The match will be the fifth one that Archundia has officiated, making him the first referee in World Cup history to call that many games in one tournament.

Archundia’s record to date has been pretty good. The man who works as both a lawyer and an economist when he isn’t refereeing, has averaged a mere 3 yellow card per game and has only expelled one player. He also has nearly perfect posture when he issues cards.

Croatia vs. Brazil – 4 yellow cards, 0 red cards
Czech Republic vs. Italy – 3 yellow cards, 1 red card
France vs. South Korea – 4 yellow cards, 0 red cards
Ukraine vs. Switzerland – 1 yellow card, 0 red cards

Maybe the key to quality World Cup refereeing is to spend hours playing FIFA video games. Or maybe it is to only use the same referee to officiate every game.

International Football News – World Cup Blog RSS Feed

troy

is this a fifa post to say look at the refs, who gives a crap whether he called 20 matches in the cup. he is still a ref and refs should just concentrate on reffing the game. sounds to me like a pr stunt to further hijack the game from the players. who cares, we should be talking about who is going to win and who will dominate. perhaps i am. i mean its likely he will steel the show. all the refs have this tornament, why should this one be different.
Bobbio

Exactly! Why steel the show when you can iron it? Eh? EH?
troy

by the way that card count doesnt show the foul count and how soft some of the fouls are.
Sonny

Well they’re definately right about his posture….
lola

they ‘ve the expectation to be star…no body give them the chance so they earned it
http://www.spanking,com Poison

yawn!
ETucker

This guy’s only done a good job because he is ignoring the FIFA directive to hand out yellow cards like candy at Halloween (US holiday reference).
Lulu

Hey Mr. Tucker,

Love it! But I think it is more like those Yellow Delicious apples that we were told not to eat because of the razors that might be inside, or the poison injected.

Wow, that really does sound like the Fifa directive! :-)
PureMuscle

In the last world cup, AR Hector Vergara officiated 6 games. He is part of Benito Archundia crew. If they are appointed to the final, Hector will have officiated in every round of the world cup.
Claude

Wasn’t he the one who didn’t allow the French goal that seemed to cross the goal line or am I losing it?
AF

@Claude – You can’t really blame the ref for that one. Blame FIFA for not allowing video evidence to be called on in such an instance.