Referees in the media (week 4)

‘Referees in the media’ will be published at the beginning of the week on the Dutch Referee Blog and provides remarkable or interesting quotes and links to articles worth reading.

“Ofcourse I talked with my assistant about this. He says he did not spit. But that will be investigated.”

Says referee Dennis Higler about his assistant Richard Slop, who is accused of spitting Dennis Hollart from Almere City.

“Based on our insight into his economic conditions, we have written off damages in the millions of crowns and are glad thereby to contribute to ending this unfortunate case which without a doubt has had large, personal consequences for Ronni Norvig.”

Says DBU spokesman Lars Berendt to Reuters about the settlement the Danish FA has made with the fan who attacked referee Herbert Fandel. The man has to pay 250.000 Danish crowns (about 33.600 euro’s; 28.000 British pounds) instead of about 1.8 million crowns.

“To me, the appointment was not just a show of confidence in me but to all Asian referees. This is a big responsibility for all of us in the Asian refereeing family to work in more and more important world matches.”

Ravshan Irmatov, the referee of the Club World Cup final between Barcelona and Santos.

Pure theoratically, it’s possible. I’m 42 and can be active for five more years, if I keep fit and healthy. But it’s not a real goal, I don’t look at those statistics.”

Wolfgang Stark just before his 250th Bundesliga match last weekend about reaching the Markus Merk’s record of 339 matches at German’s highest level.

Gözübüyuk breaks all Dutch referee records

The Dutch Soccer Association has today announced which referees will be promoted after this season. Serdar Gözübüyuk will be the only new referee on the senior list, the highest level in the Netherlands. He got a contract for three years.

The 25-year old referee is the first with foreign roots who promotes from the junior list. He was on the second level since 2009 and will replace Ben Haverkort, who had to quit the top list. Gözübüyuk holds two youngest referee records: he made his professional debut on the 10th of March in 2008 at the age of 23 and his first match on the highest level was 2nd May 2010 at the age of 24.

Other promotions
Dennis Higler and Rogier Honig were promoted from the Referee Masterclass Group (3rd level) to the Junior Group. Assistants Charl Schaap en Hessel Steegstra step up to the Senior Group. Joost Mulder and Joost van Zuilen to the Junior AR Group.

Throwing snow balls to the referee

Volunteers did their very best to clean the pitch after the snowy weather last weekend. Fourth official Dennis Higler is also doing a few warm-up sprints …

… and this is what happened:

Update: Snow attack from the fans in Belgium.

Who missed my tweet about the snow dilemma for a referee. Watch the interview with Dermot Gallacher on Sky Sports.