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Originally Posted by ukhotstove
I said English refs are the best and even those are few and far between, refs from countries like Sri Lanka as an example just aren't up to scratch it would be like saying somebody who refs in the English non leagues should be able to ref top matches.
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Refs from countries like Sri Lanka don't referee international tournaments, though, at least not without first gaining the type of experience you're talking about. FIFA referees start out as assistants working friendlies before they get the head jobs at tournaments.
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Let me ask you a question do you think an official from a college baseball game who is used to games attended by say 5,000 fans could handle the pressure of a World Series game attended by around 50,000 with cameras from all around the globe, personally I think he'd need a change of boxers every inning.
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If you just tossed him into that, sure, he'd probably have issues. That's not what FIFA does with its refs, though. It's not like they pluck a guy straight from a semi-pro league in Burkina Faso and put him in charge of a Confederations Cup semifinal. These guys have to work their way up through the ranks.
And really, if the representative from the elite European countries is Howard Webb (who botched things up pretty well in the EURO 2008 tournament, as I recall), I don't see how that's an improvement over the referees from other countries we've been seeing in this tournament.