Football Victoria would like to recognise Victorian referee Shaun Evans on his appointment at the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™ later this month.
Chris Beath, Ashley Beecham, Anton Shchetinin, Shaun Evans and Alireza Faghani from the Islamic Republic of Iran, who has been based in Australia since 2019, make up the 36 referees, 69 assistant referees and 24 video match officials (VMOs) have been chosen in close cooperation with the six confederations.
Beath and Faghani have been selected as referees, while Beecham and Shchetinin are assistant referees with Shaun Evans named as a video match official.
Their appointments are based on their quality and the performances delivered at FIFA tournaments as well as at other international and domestic competitions in recent years.
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Selected match officials represent highest level of refereeing worldwide
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Preparation seminars for selected match officials starting in early summer
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Six women’s match officials have been appointed for the first time in World Cup history
“As always, the criteria we have used is ‘quality first’ and the selected match officials represent the highest level of refereeing worldwide,” said the chairman of the FIFA Referees Committee, Pierluigi Collina.
“The 2018 World Cup was very successful, partly because of the high standard of refereeing, and we will do our best to be even better in a few months in Qatar.”
The “Road to Qatar 2022” project started already in 2019, with more than 50 trios considered possible candidates and going through intensive preparation. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, however, this preparation was anything, but easy, as in-presence activities were suspended for a long period.
“The pandemic affected our activities, in particular in 2020 and at the beginning of 2021. Luckily, the World Cup was still quite far, and we had enough time to provide the candidates with good preparation.
"We are announcing these selections well in advance as we want to work even harder with all those who have been appointed for the FIFA World Cup, monitoring them in the next months. The message is clear: don’t rest on your laurels, keep working hard and prepare yourselves very seriously for the World Cup,” said Collina.
Massimo Busacca, FIFA’s Director of Refereeing, ensures the match officials will receive all the necessary support by FIFA, as their preparation is paramount.
“Thanks to an innovative tracking and support programme, all the match officials can be supervised by FIFA referees’ instructors even more closely and intensively than in previous years. This is a very important factor, from which we expect considerable improvements and progress in view of the FIFA World Cup 2022,” explained Busacca.
“In addition to that, there will be tailor-made individual programmes, in particular concerning health and fitness.
Each match official will be carefully monitored in the next months with a final assessment on technical, physical and medical aspects to be made shortly before the World Cup, in order to have them in the best conditions when the ball starts rolling in Qatar.”
The selected match officials will participate in early summer in several seminars (Asunción, Madrid and Doha), reviewing and analysing video clips of real match situations, and taking part in practical training sessions with players, which will be filmed to enable participants to receive instant feedback from the instructors.
“The key focuses of the preparation remain protecting players and the image of the game, consistency, uniformity, reading the game from a technical and tactical perspective and understanding a variety of player and team mentalities,” added Busacca.
“We can’t eliminate all mistakes, but we will do everything we can to reduce them.”
The VAR system was implemented for the first time ever at the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia™ and four years later, a team of 24 video match officials (VMOs) will operate in Qatar, ready to provide their team-mates on the pitch with technological support, if needed.
Due to the very limited number of FIFA member associations having implemented the VAR system at the time, VMOs for Russia 2018 were mainly selected from Europe and South America. Today, the VAR system is used in all major competitions worldwide and VMOs from Asia, Africa, as well as Central and North America will also participate in the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™.
List of the appointed match officials for the FIFA World Cup 2022 Qatar™