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Fifa Ballon d’Or: Who’s your referee of 2012?
Fifa will be releasing awards on the 7th of January for the best player (Ballon d’Or), best coach, most beautiful goal, a lifetime achievement and fair play. In the end the worth reading blog World Of Football Refereeing elected Cuneyt Cakir as referee of 2012. Their verdict: “Çakır’s semifinal appearance in UEFA Champions League (FC Barcelona – Chelsea), at EURO 2012 having been one of the best officials of the tournament and finally his FIFA Club World Cup final were reasons enough for the majority to vote for him.” Yes, he’s a very good referee. Can’t argue with that. But the referee who surprised me the most was Jonas Eriksson…
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‘The colour of Eriksson’s hair makes Holland win’
Netherlands has a good chance to beat Germany at tonight’s Euro 2012 clash in group B. At least, if we base our conclusions on referee’s hair stats of previous matches between the two teams. Dutch graphic design student Bart Corré analysed all previous 38 matches between the two teams for his graduation thesis (pdf). Germany scored 56 points in them, Holland 44. The Netherlands will also not win based on the nationality of the referee: both teams scored totally 7 points each with a Swedish referee. Tonight’s referee is Jonas Eriksson and this important clash in group B is his first match of the tournament. It’s also not the colour…
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Reactions from referees who’ll go to EC 2012
Uefa has selected twelve referees for the European Championship 2012 in Ukraine and Poland. You can find the Uefa list with twelve referees and the fourth officials here. I’ve searched the internet for reactions from each appointed referee, which you can find below. European referee boss Pierluigi Collina on Uefa.com: “The 12 are all referees from the elite group, so they are the top referees in Europe. They have all refereed UEFA Champions League matches during the past two seasons. What they can guarantee are two main elements – quality and experience. And only one referee, Howard Webb, was at UEFA EURO 2008. So there has been significant turnover.” Cüneyt…