Silence reigns at the Qatar Sports Club. The call to prayer from a nearby mosque is barely heard. Despite being surrounded by huge highways and located in the shadow – what an irony – of the skyscrapers of downtown Doha, silence manages to make its way. On the pitch of the stadium, fenced off as if it were a G8 summit, Mateu Lahoz, dressed in a FIFA bib, makes the VAR sign with his hands, stands on the wing with agile strides and takes out a card red after looking at the images. There are no big protests and the ball rolls again immediately. It is the only sound that is heard, the sound of football. No, the World Cup hasn’t started yet. Two local teams are playing a friendly so that the referees can familiarize themselves with the routines and the changes in dynamics that await them during the tournament.
“Being here is not only a great joy, it is also a privilege and a great responsibility. We want to enjoy it”, confirmed Fernando Rapallini, one of the two Argentine referees called up for this World Cup and the first South American to direct a Euro Cup match (in 2021). A few meters away, behind him, Mateu, the only Spanish main referee present in Qatar, continues pointing out fouls. But he immediately leaves the field of play and hands over the baton to a teammate. Referee training is rotating.
Among the 36 main referees appointed for the tournament, including the Italian Daniele Orsato, chosen to lead the inaugural Qatar-Ecuador match tomorrow, there are also three women. It is the first time in history that it has happened in a men’s World Cup and, coincidentally, it will be in Qatar, a country that cannot exactly boast of treating women equally, having severed a good part of their rights. Perhaps it happens precisely because of that… but the reflections are free.
Those chosen have been the French Stephanie Frappart, the Rwandan Salima Mukansanga and the Japanese Yoshimi Yamashita. “We are proud to be part of the arbitral family here in Qatar and that means that there is the possibility of a normalization on the horizon. If they give us opportunities, we will show that women can be everywhere,” Mukansanga proudly proclaimed on the stadium tartan. The game, behind him, continues with constant stoppages and consultations with the VAR. But Mateu is already in the dressing room. He has not wanted to speak. “FIFA’s motto is Team One and we say that we are One Team (a team). We make no distinction, we are all one”, Rapallini boasted about the integration of the three referees in an eminently masculine nucleus. “We would like to underline that what is happening is totally normal. It is historical, yes, but we are all the same. We are one team”, stressed the American linesman Kathryn Nesbitt. “All the referees who are here have challenges, perhaps we women have faced different ones but we have to show that we are at the same level,” she added.
The entire refereeing body has been in Doha since November 8 preparing for the World Cup. They carry out physical exercises daily, drills like the one that took place yesterday at the Qatar Sports Club, and attend continuous seminars on all possible edges that may arise throughout the tournament. “We place a lot of emphasis on respect for the opponent and respect for the game, as fundamental premises of the World Cup,” Rapallini explained.
The semi-automatic detection of offside from the VAR room is one of the great novelties in Qatar, a system similar to the one used since this season in the Champions League, although new for most non-European referees. With 12 dedicated cameras in each stadium exclusively for detecting offside, referees can monitor up to 29 different areas of each player’s body up to 50 times per second to accurately assess their position at the time of the pass. The ball has an integrated chip that is also an invaluable help to specify when the footballer hits with it. “Detecting the offside will be much faster but not immediately. But the final decision will always be made by the referees”, recalled Pierluigi Collina, FIFA’s head of referees, at the World Cup Press Center in Poland.
A few kilometers to the east, near the Qatar Sports Club, the mosque calls for prayer again. The referees are already in their hotel. Silence continues to triumph.
