The Arsenal-Bayern that was played yesterday at the Emirates Stadium has entered the history books of Spanish refereeing. For the first time in the Champions League, the match was led by a refereeing team made up entirely of Spanish referees. Marta Huerta de Aza from Palencia was in charge of delivering justice, accompanied by the assistants Guadalupe Porras Ayuso and Eliana Fernández González.
Also in the video arbitration there were Spanish referees: Guillermo Cuadra Fernández was the VAR; and José Luis Munuera Montero in the AVAR. In this case, they are male referees since the referees are still in training to be able to exercise this new figure that is not so common in women’s football matches and is reserved for only a handful of matches.
Huerta de Aza was highly questioned about her judgment in a Zadrazil entry on Kim Little in which the Spanish interpreted that the Englishwoman faked her fall, despite the fact that the Arsenal captain ended up having to leave the game, injured, after 12 minutes of game. The Gunner fans also regretted that Viggósdóttir did not award a penalty. Despite this, Arsenal had no problem to comfortably overcome the tie against an unrecognizable Bayern thanks to a great goal from Frida Maanum and another goal from Stina Blackstenius.
Both Huerta de Aza and Porras Ayuso, who were part of the refereeing team at the last European Championship in England, will also be at the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand next summer. The Palencia collegiate is the only Spanish main referee who has been appointed for this important event, confirming the rise of Spanish arbitration in recent years.
For Huerta de Aza this has been his fourth UWCL game this season in which he has led Ajax-Arsenal, Juventus-Lyon, Arsenal-Lyon and, yesterday, Arsenal-Bayern. For his part, Porras Ayuso became the first Spanish referee to participate in the men’s Champions League in September. He was in a Napoli-Liverpool as Del Cerro Grande’s assistant. The woman from Extremadura was also the first woman in a LaLiga match, in the Europa League or in a Cup final.
