Among the French who will be able to enjoy their World Cup in Qatar a little longer, it is not only Didier Deschamps, his players and their supporters. There is also Clément Turpin and Stéphanie Frappart, the two central French referees selected for the competition, but also Turpin’s two assistants, Nicolas Danos and Cyril Gringore.
According to a list published by Fifa, 16 referees from “Team One”, but also 30 assistants and 5 video referees have been released by Fifa for the rest of the World Cup, of which there are only eight games left to play with the four quarters, the two halves, the small final and the final. Among the 20 surviving central referees, Clément Turpin and Stéphanie Frappart therefore.
While Frappart became, during Costa Rica-Germany, the first woman to referee a World Cup match, the other two central female referees, Salima Mukansanga and Yoshimi Yamashita, were not selected, while ‘they were part of the seven central referees not to have been called upon for any match during this World Cup as main referee.
The controversial Bakary Gassama, referee of the play-off between Algeria and Cameroon and whose name is at the heart of Samuel Eto’o’s freakout against an Algerian videographer, was also released, as was New Zealander Matthew Conger, who will undoubtedly go down in World Cup history as the first to invalidate a goal after the final whistle of a match. Unfortunately for the French, it was that of Antoine Griezmann against Tunisia.
For now, the referee teams for the first two quarter-finals are known. That of Croatia-Brazil will be led by Englishman Michael Oliver, and that of Argentina-Netherlands by Spaniard Antonio Mateu Lahoz.
