In our country, the referee team of Qatar World Cup, Shi Xiang, Maning and Cao Yi, lined up in order from left to right, interpreted the rigor and professionalism of refereeing with practical actions. Picture from the interviewee.
Bian Liqun/CNN
"Although the credibility of national soccer referees has been questioned in the past, through unremitting efforts, they have proved their value with practical actions." In the face of three national soccer referees successfully selected for the Qatar World Cup referee list, Liu Tiejun, head of the refereeing department of the CFA, told China News that he was overwhelmed with emotion.
Their efforts did not happen overnight. Long before the World Cup in Russia, the Chinese referee team had already started a long and arduous road of preparation. From daily physical fitness monitoring to theoretical tests, from video case studies to English proficiency tests, every step of the process was rigorous and meticulous.
With FIFA's all-encompassing test, referees cannot afford to miss a beat. Head referee Manning revealed that they have to undergo two to three hours of intense physical training every day. Before each match, they spend a whole day studying the technical and tactical play of both sides, key players and so on.
Opportunity always comes to those who are prepared. After unremitting efforts, the Chinese referee team successfully stood out and appeared in the final list as expected. They not only do justice to the Chinese soccer referees, but also bring a hint of surprise to the national soccer team in the doldrums.
Reporter asked: "Three Chinese referees were selected for the World Cup referee list, what is the significance of this historic breakthrough?" Liu Tiejun replied: "This is the affirmation of the overall level of Chinese referees to improve the legal level of the selected referees, but also the affirmation of the CFA referee training work, there will be more Chinese referees in the future in the world tournament to exercise and show."
"Is it quite enough gold to be selected for this final list?" Liu Tiejun replied, "This selection is enough to prove that the talent and level of the Chinese referee team has reached the top in Asia and the world. When FIFA released the list of referees for this World Cup, Mr. Korina, Chairman of the FIFA Referee Committee, introduced the situation and said that the referees selected for this list represent the highest level of referees in the world today."
A team of Chinese referees officiating matches overseas. Picture from the interviewee.
The reporter asked, "What is the selection process like? What kind of assessment do you have to go through?" Manning replied, "Before entering FIFA's assessment horizon, we first have to go through AFC's selection. As early as in the years leading up to the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia, the AFC had actually begun tracking and investigating young referees across Asia, selecting a dozen or so groups of referees as the initial candidates after the FIFA World Cup in Russia."
By 2019, FIFA began formally assessing and evaluating the referees who made the first round of shortlists thoroughly through various competitions and training, from which four groups of referees were selected, plus the age-eligible referees who had legally officiated at the World Cup in Russia, to pick into an eight-group list.
From the beginning of 2020 to the just-concluded group stage of the 2022 AFC Champions League, FIFA conducted a final round of assessment and evaluation of these eight groups of referees before confirming this final list.
The reporter asked, "In this long cycle of investigation, what are the difficulties to face?" Manning replied, "Each round of FIFA's assessment of candidate referees is all-encompassing, including daily physical training monitoring, regular physical testing, referee theory assessment, match video case analysis, English language proficiency assessment, and tournament law enforcement level assessment, which requires that our candidate referees can't have any shortcomings, can't slack off, can't make omissions, and must do their best. "
In terms of fitness, for example, we train gruelingly for two to three hours a day.
The standard of physical fitness test is very high, according to the World Cup referee's physical fitness test standard, in the short distance sprinting ability test, each of the six consecutive 40 meter sprinting runs should not be more than 5.8 seconds each time, and each interval should not be more than 1 minute.
Interval running test 75 meters fast run in 15 seconds, 25 meters slow run in 15 seconds, 40 consecutive cycles, etc.
In addition, FIFA specifically assigns technical lecturers to follow up and evaluate every match we referee, which also includes the home league we referee, and requires us to referee matches in accordance with FIFA's concepts and standards, which requires candidate referees to prepare for every match with all their might.
Our Chinese referee team will do a lot of pre-match preparation before refereeing each match, studying and analyzing the technical and tactical play of both sides of the match, the characteristics of the players and coaches, the key players, the history of the match team's record, various influencing factors and so on, and the video analysis of the match alone will take almost a whole day's time.
In fact, soccer referees, like everyone else, will inevitably make mistakes in their life and work, but FIFA has very high requirements for referees, so it is necessary for referees to make fewer mistakes in refereeing matches, not to mention major mistakes.
FIFA arranges such a long period of investigation in order to make a comprehensive evaluation of the candidate referees, to exclude incidental events, and also to require the referees to have a lasting and stable high level of refereeing competitive status.
This selection process was also affected by the epidemic, which made our Chinese referees' road to the World Cup even more difficult. With the need to penalize high-level competitions during the investigation period, and at the same time taking epidemic prevention into consideration, playing abroad for a long period of time puts a lot of mental and psychological pressure on everyone.
And it is also necessary to maintain the physical condition during the isolation period, after all, the space in the isolation room is limited, and the training equipment is scarce, but we still overcame all kinds of difficulties, and always maintained a good physical athletic condition.
A team of Chinese referees go overseas to officiate matches. Picture from the interviewee.
The reporter asked, "The epidemic did bring many difficulties to our work, what kind of support did the CFA give us during this selection process?" Cao Yi replied, "In the past few years, due to the impact of the epidemic, the CFA has pushed the referees to actively participate in the online training of FIFA, UEFA and AFC, and invited the top lecturers of FIFA to give lectures to the referees of the leagues in an online way.
We overcome the problem of jet lag despite being abroad and actively participate in these online studies to constantly learn the latest legal concepts and knowledge of FIFA.
When we return to China to participate in league enforcement, the CFA will also try to send us to enforce the league's high-level, high-quality matches, and during the national team's training and preparation, we will also be invited to enforce the practice matches, which allows us to maintain a higher state of law enforcement during the period of the domestic, but also to maintain a higher state of law enforcement.
Shi Xiang replied: "Epidemic these years, entry and exit visas, round trips and many other work are facing unprecedented trouble, the CFA departments to fully protect our travel, but also actively coordinate with the AFC, FIFA, the tournament hosting football associations to give us stay in West Asia, local and international trip booking provides great convenience.
Including a number of Chinese embassies in the West Asia region also gave us a lot of support and care during our stay abroad to enforce the tournament."
