Howard Webb: biography of the football referee

Howard Webb is a former English football referee. Knight of the Order of the British Empire. Referee's career Webb in the English Premier League began in 2003 and lasted 11 years. In 2014, with arbitration in football, Howard Webb decided to finish.

short biography

Born Howard Webb in Rotherham on July 14, 1971. By profession, he is a policeman. In 1998, Webb fulfilled his first match in the refereeing career. It was a duel of the Football Conference, whose games he was judging for two seasons.

From 2000 to 2003, Howard worked as an arbiter of the Football League. From the 2003/2004 season and until the end of his career, Webb judged the matches of the highest division of English football - the English Premier League. Already after a year of work in the Premier League, Webb was named FIFA referee.

Biography Howard Webb is full of controversial moments. The judge took many obviously wrong decisions that changed the course of the game in favor of one of the teams. In one of the Premier League matches between London's Chelsea and Manchester United, Howard Webb appointed a penalty to the Blues for a foul outside the penalty area, and by the end of the match Javier Hernández, also Chicharito, scored a goal out of the game. But even all the mistakes of the referee can not cast doubt on the fact that Webb is one of the best judges in the history of English and world football.

Now Howard Webb lives in South Yorkshire with his wife and three children: Jack, Lucy and Holly. He works as a sergeant in the police department.

Final of the UEFA Champions League

At the end of May 2010, Webb was appointed chief referee of the final match of the Champions League. In that match Milan "Inter" and Munich "Bavaria" took part. The game took place in the Spanish capital at the stadium of the Real Madrid football club called Santiago Bernabets.

The duel ended with the victory of the Italian team with a score of 2: 0. Controversial moments in the game was not. Webb sued the match at the highest level, showing three yellow cards. Two "mustard plaster" received the players of the German team Martin Demicheles and Mark van Bommel. As part of the "Inter" yellow light in front of him saw defender Christian Kivu.

Final of the World Cup 2010 and the 2014 Mundial

2010 was the best year in Webb's career. After the final of the Champions League, he was on the list of arbitrators who got to the World Cup matches in South Africa. In the middle of July, Howard worked, perhaps, the most important match in his judging career - the World Cup finals. Howard Webb became the first English referee who judged the World Cup finals as the main arbiter.

About his appointment for the decisive match of the tournament, Webb found out three days before the match. In that duel, two strongest European teams met at the time: Spain and the Netherlands. For the match, Webb showed the players of both teams a total of 14 yellow cards and 1 red, thereby setting a new record for the number of cards in the final matches. Prior to this, the richest in warning final was played in 1986, when players received 6 cards.

For the first half hour of the game, the judge "awarded" cards of three Dutch (van Persie, van Bommel and de Jong), as well as two Spaniards (Puyol and Ramos). In the second half, from the 54th to the 57th minute, the cards were given to van Bronhorst and Heitinga. During the second half of the game, the referee showed another "mustard" to the players of both teams.

Five more yellow cards were seen by the players in the second overtime. For Heitinga, she became the second and transformed into a red one, and the player was forced to leave the field before the due date.

In 2014, Webb went to Brazil to judge World Cup matches. Unlike the previous world forum Howard was not assigned to the key fights of the tournament. In all, at the World Cup 2014 he sued two games. His debut match was a group stage bout between Colombia and Côte d'Ivoire. The second game, on which Webb worked, was a match between the hosts of the championship and the national team of Chile in the 1/8 finals.

Statistics

Just for his career, Howard Webb sued 368 fights, in which he showed 1116 yellow and 49 red cards. Thus, on average for the match he showed the players more than three yellow and 0.13 red cards.

The greatest number of matches (47) Webb held in the 2005/06 season. In them, he showed the players 117 yellow cards and removed seven players. In the next season Howard sued for 4 bouts less, but yellow cards showed 151 times, and reds - 9.

His first red card, Webb showed the player "Southampton" Michael Svensson in the 2003/04 season, which became the debut for the referee. In the second season he showed already 5 reds. The greatest number of removals Howard Webb spent in the seasons 2003/04 and 2006/07 - nine.