UEFA Referee Categories for winter 2015-2016
Uefa has come up with the new lists of referee promotions and demotions. The Uefa referee categories for winter 2015-2016 are already published in the blog The 3rd Team. Last summer Uefa promoted refs to the Elite group. This time the biggest changes are the new referees in the First Group.
Promotions
To Elite group: no changes
To first group: Benoît Bastien (France), John Beaton (Scotland), Jesús Gil Manzano (Spain), Serdar Gözübüyük (The Netherlands), Jakob Kehlet (Denmark), István Kovács (Romania), Pawel Raczkowski (Poland), Tobias Stieler (Germany).
To Second group: Thorvaldur Arnason (Iceland), Nikola Dabanović (Montenegro), Andrew Dallas (Scotland), Bartosz Frankowski (Poland), Tore Hansen (Norway), Eneja Jorgji (Albania), Charalampos Kalogeropoulos (Greece), Robert Madley (England, new on Fifa list), Ville Nevalainen (Finland), Ali Palabiyik (Turkey), Bojan Pandzić (Sweden), Nikola Popov (Bulgaria), Roi Reinshreiber (Israel), Sandro Schärer (Switzerland), Frank Schneider (France, new to Fifa list), Manuel Schüttengruber (Austria), Bart Vertenten (Belgium), Anatoliy Zhabchenko (Ukraine).
To Third group and new to Fifa: Alexandros Aretopoulos (Greece), Veaceslav Banari (Moldova), Deniz Ates Bitnel (Turkey), Jörgen Daugbjerg Burchardt (Denmark), Andrew Davey (Northern Ireland), Nenad Djokić (Serbia), Trustin Cann Farrugia (Malta), Juri Frischer (Estonia), Filip Glova (Slovakia), Aleksandrs Golubevs (Latvia), Sergio Filipe Grade de Sousa Piscarreta (Portugal), Robert Harvey (Ireland), Ferenc Karakó (Hungary), Peter Kjaersgaard (Denmark), Georgios Kominis (Greece), Georgios Kyzas (Greece), Martin Lundby (Norway), Stavros Mantalos (Greece), Boris Marhefka (Slovakia), Glenn Nyberg (Sweden), Pavel Orel (Czech Republic), Anastasios Papapetrou (Greece), Donatas Rumsas (Lithuania), Fedyai San (Switzerland), Joao Pedro Silva Pinheiro (Portugal), Ryan Stewart (Wales), Alex De Albuquerque Troleis (Faroe Islands), Alper Ulusoy (Turkey), Fyodor Zammit (Malta), Mario Zebec (Croatia).
Demotions
To second group: Pol van Boekel (The Netherlands – source is Dutch FA), Pavel Balaj (Romania), Marcin Borski (Poland), Carlos Clos Gomez (Spain), Christian Dingert (Germany), Steven McLean (Scotland), Leontios Trattou (Cyprus)
To third group: Stanislav Todorov (Bulgaria).
Full lists are on The 3rd Team.