Kelly dismisses relevance of referee’s nationality

IRELAND’S top referee yesterday insisted the home nation of his Norweigian colleague, Tom Henning Ovrebo, should have no bearing on any critique of his performance.

FIFA official Alan Kelly rejected vociferous claims across the water that the man at the centre of a Champions League storm was unqualified to take on such a high profile game due to the low level of his own domestic league.

“I don’t conform to that sort of mentality at all,” Kelly said yesterday. “If you use the country that Chelsea play in, Howard Webb is a very good referee, a referee that I have a lot of time for but he missed a handball from the Porto goalkeeper a yard outside the box in the Champions League quarter-finals last year and he was looking straight at it.

“It doesn’t matter what country you come from. Obviously being from Norway, the calibre of player may not be of the same standard to those in England on a week to week basis but Tom has been a FIFA referee for a long time and he hasn’t got to the level he’s got to without refereeing high profile situations with big clubs and big stadiums. He has been tested in that situation before.

“It’s easy to say something as narrow-minded as that when you have a clutch of situations like what we saw on Wednesday night.

“The same argument was used against Terje Hauge when he refereed Barcelona and Arsenal in the Champions League Final (in 2006) – he was from Norway too but he had been at World Cups and European Championships for years before that.

“It’s the easy thing to say. Every referee in every country, big and small, they all make mistakes.’’