That has never happened before: At the soccer World Cup in Qatar, for the first time, women are also in charge on the field. Three female referees from France, Rwanda and Japan have been nominated – one of their male colleagues is from Berlin.
It is a premier in the history of FIFA: for the first time there are three female referees on the field at a football World Cup for men. Stéphanie Frappart of France, Salima Mukansanga of Rwanda and Yoshimi Yamashita of Japan were nominated by the FIFA Referees Committee on Thursday for the world title fights from November 21 to December 18 in Qatar.
For Pierluigi Collina, the nomination of three referees and the three assistants Neuza Back (Brazil), Karen Díaz Medina (Mexico) and Kathryn Nesbitt (USA) is “the culmination of a long process that began several years ago with the use of female referees at youth – and A-men competitions of FIFA and proof that it’s quality, not gender, that counts”. “I hope that the appointment of elite female referees for important men’s competitions will soon no longer be a sensation but a matter of course,” said the former top Italian referee.
Qatar World Cup: Premiere for German referee Daniel Siebert
Daniel Siebert from Berlin is one of the 36 World Cup referees for the first time. The 38-year-old whistled at last year’s European Championship and has been a FIFA referee since 2015. The assistants at the desert World Cup are Rafael Foltyn (Mainz) and Jan Seidel (Schwante), and the video assistants are Bastian Dankert (Rostock) and Marco Fritz (Korb). Felix Brych from Munich whistled at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil and 2018 in Russia. Since 2019, 50 referee trios had prepared for a possible assignment.
Sources: “Guardian”, DPA
