Two referees will reduce football errors, says UEFA official

By Martyn Ziegler

EUROPE’S top football official has called for the game to experiment with having two referees in charge of a match.

With several controversies surrounding match officials during the current World Cup, UEFA chief executive Gerhard Aigner believes the sport should test a scheme with one referee in each half of the pitch in a bid to cut down on errors.

Aigner said on UEFA’s website: “It must be an advantage for the simple fact that the referee is less tired; he can be closer to the action and has a better chance of judging a situation such as offside. We should look into this.

“How can a referee judge whether a player is acting if he is not close enough to the action? Before we start to talk about cameras, slow-motion replays or stopping the game we should first exploit human resources. We have unfortunately never had a serious test with two referees.”

Aigner also believes the rule limiting the number of referees at a World Cup to one per country should be scrapped, saying FIFA and UEFA should pick the best officials for their competitions.

He added: “If we have two or three excellent referees in one country we should choose all of them to officiate in the same competition.

“It doesn’t make any difference to the Turkish national team to have two Italian referees in a row, as long as they are different persons.

“If they are the best they should get the chance to be there, where the best teams are.

“We also have to ensure that they can officiate with their normal assistants.”

Aigner claims the use of officials from minor footballing countries could cause problems in that they may be unused to very large crowds and be influenced by the fans — suggestions which have been made against referees and assistant referees who made decisions which appeared to favour joint World Cup hosts South Korea unfairly in their knock-out games.