“I am not going to consider the referee as an adversary. He is there to best apply the laws of the game.” On the eve of the France-Morocco quarter-final match, scheduled for Thursday, July 9, Didier Deschamps wanted to put an end to any controversy after the appointment of an Argentinian, Facundo Tello, and four of his compatriots, to referee the match.
Many Internet users have not taken the same precautions. “Five Argentine referees for a France match, doesn’t that smack of fixing? », Write some on X, while the rivalry between the two nations has been exacerbated since the 2022 World Cup final lost by the Blues. Others denounce “a pro-Argentina bias within Fifa, affecting the World Cup”.
The fear of certain supporters? Replay a match as difficult as the one against Paraguay in the round of 16. Uzbek referee Ilgiz Tantashev, inexperienced at this level of competition, was criticized for his inability to hold the match. So many controversies which raise the question of how the International Football Federation (Fifa) selects World Cup referees? Who can, or cannot, be on the whistle during meetings?
An international list of arbitrators
According to the regulations, it is the FIFA Referees Committee which appoints the referees, assistant referees, fourth officials and video officials, all “selected from among the referees appearing on the international list of FIFA referees”. For each match, the body thus composes this “third team” according to its own criteria, in particular the quality of the referees, the regularity of their performances at the highest level, their international experience and their ability to manage the demands of the biggest competitions.
Their nationality also matters. Fifa specifies that referees must “come from a member association not represented by a team playing the match in question”. In other words, a Frenchman cannot be on the whistle for a Blues match, a Senegalese for a Terenga Lions match, and so on.
Sporting and geopolitical context
Once the arbitrator is appointed, the decision is “final and without appeal”, stipulates the rules. But, beyond the written rules, Fifa takes some precautions to preserve the neutrality of referees and facilitate their work. The commission takes into account the media and symbolic context of a meeting. It is for this reason that the Argentinians and British have no longer refereed their respective matches since 1982. That year, Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, a possession of the United Kingdom. After seventy-four days of war and several hundred deaths, mainly military, the conflict ended in the defeat of Buenos Aires. Forty years later, Fifa prefers to avoid reopening these wounds by appointing a British referee for a match involving Albiceste, and vice versa.
Compared to such geopolitical issues, the sporting rivalry between two countries like Argentina and France seems little. Which does not prevent Fifa from trying to protect itself against unnecessary controversies. Thus, the more the competition progresses, the more rare it is that a referee from a country still competing is chosen by the whistle. In 2022 in Qatar, Frenchman Clément Turpin no longer officiated after the round of 16 because the Blues were still in the table.
Fifa’s choices do not seem as strict during this World Cup, as shown by the appointment of Facundo Tello as referee for the France-Morocco match. But the body took care to ensure a certain balance: on Tuesday, it was the Frenchman François Letexier who officiated in the round of 16 between the Argentine world champion and Egypt (3-2).
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