The 38 Refs Shortlisted for World Cup 2010

Remember World Cup 2006? There was some questionable refereeing. Not least of which was Graham Poll showing Croatia’s Josip Simunic three yellow cards in one game. Points for creativity Graham, but in hindsight the World Cup finals was probably the wrong place to try out your new system.

There were also a record four reds and sixteen yellows in the Portugal vs Netherlands game, which we can all agree was just plain silly.

FIFA will eventually trim this list of 38 down to an expected 20 or so actual World Cup referees, so fingers crossed they make the right choices and we spend the tournament talking about the football and not the decisions.

Here’s the list (and no, Graham Poll isn’t on there)…

Europe

Olegario Bartolo F. Benquerenca, Portugal

Ivan Bebek, Croatia

Massimo Busacca, Switzerland

Frank De Bleekere, Belgium

Thomas Einwaller, Austria

Grzegorz Gilewski, Poland

Martin Hansson, Sweden

Viktor Kassai, Hungary

Stephane Lannoy, France

Tom Ovrebo, Norway

Roberto Rosetti, Italy

Wolfgang Stark, Germany

Alberto Undiano Mallenco, Spain

Howard Webb, England

South America

Carlos Amarilla Demarqui, Paraguay

Hector Baldassi, Argentina

Jorge Larrionda, Uruguay

Pablo Pozo Quinteros, Chile

Oscar Ruiz Acosta, Colombia

Carlos Simon, Brazil

Martin Vazquez Broquetas, Uruguay

Asia

Khalil Al Ghamdi, Saudi Arabia

Matthew Breeze, Australia

Ravshan Irmatov, Uzbekistan

Subkhiddin Mohd Salleh, Malaysia

Yuichi Nishimura, Japan

Africa

Mohamed Benouza, Algeria

Coffi Codjia, Benin

Koman Coulibaly, Mali

Jerome Damon, South Africa

Eddy Maillet, Seychelles

North, Central America, Caribbean:

Joel Aguilar Chicas, El Salvador

Benito Archundia Tellez, Mexico

Carlos Batres Gonzalez, Guatemala

Jair Marrufo, United States

Marco Rodriguez Moreno, Mexico

Australia and South Pacific

Michael Hester, New Zealand

Peter O’Leary, New Zealand

Official FIFA pdf of prospective refs is here.

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