The Palencia native attached to the Tenerife school Marta Huerta de Aza yesterday became the first Spanish referee to lead a Women’s World Cup match, the China-Haiti match, played at the Australian Hindmarsh Stadium in Adelaide and ended with a 1-0 victory for the Chinese team .
The performance of the Spanish was not without controversy in a game that was difficult to referee. In minute 29 came the first key play. China’s Rui Zhang made a spike-first, mid-height tackle over Sherly Jeudy. The Spanish referee showed her the yellow one, but the Canarian Hernández Hernández, from the VAR, called her for the review and the Palencia native did not hesitate: she rectified, red and to the street. China was left with one less player with an hour to go.
There would still be three other plays in which the resolution of the VAR was decisive. The first was a disallowed goal against Haiti for offside: Borgella scored a pass from Mondesir, but Mondesir was ahead. The last two were the most important. In the 76th minute, in a play in which Huerta de Aza had signaled offside and which had ended with a demolition of Linyan Zhang in the box, the VAR called for review again. There was also rectification: regulatory position and penalty in favor of China scored by Wang Shuang, the 1-0 that was going to give China victory.
The controversies did not end there. In the twelve added minutes, the Canarian referee signaled a penalty in favor of Haiti in minute 92 for knocking down Eloisant. Again a visit to the VAR made him change his decision and China tied up the three points.
The Canarian referee is not unknown to those who follow women’s football. Quite the contrary: she is a fixture at big events, both nationally and internationally. In the last European Championship in England, she directed the opening match, played on July 6, 2022 at Old Trafford, in which she was accompanied by Guadalupe Porras Ayuso, her eternal squire.
An international since 2016, Huerta de Aza has directed matches in the women’s Champions League and in Spain, apart from directing them in women’s soccer, she has been the main referee in Primera RFEF matches, also acting as fourth referee in the men’s LaLiga. In fact, the woman from Palencia and her partner Guadalupe Porras Ayuso starred in another important moment by completing an arbitration quartet with two women for the first time in the highest category of Spanish football. It was in a Getafe-Real Sociedad on October 3, 2021 in a match refereed by the Andalusian Figueroa Vázquez.
For many years, Huerta de Aza combined her passion for arbitration with the profession of a teacher. “It was the fruit of necessity. If I did not referee, I did not receive any financial compensation. I could not risk having an injury, being sick or anything and not receive anything, ”she qualifies. A trade, that of teaching, that she abandoned when her eldest daughter, Valeria, was born. “I decided to quit because if I worked, refereed and wanted to be with my daughter, I couldn’t count the hours I had in the day,” she says.
For Huerta de Aza, refereeing in the World Cup means fulfilling the dream of his life: “Behind this there is a lot of suffering, a lot of sweat, many hours of training and also depriving yourself of things at the family level.” In 2022 she was designated by the IFFHS (International Federation of Football History and Statistics) as the fourth best referee in the world.
