Who Are The Referees For The World Cup?

The World Cup in Russia will see the best players in the world come together to all try and achieve the same goal, World Cup glory. With 32 teams battling it out over 64 matches, the players themselves will obviously have a huge say, but one man will have an effect in every game and that is the referee.

So, at World Soccer we have provided you with a full list of all the referees officiating games for the tournament.

36 individuals have been selected to referee games, and they come from a variety of confederations.

The names are drawn from the six football confederations under FIFA and much like the allotted amount of qualified teams from each confederation, the distribution is not equal. European governing body UEFA have 10 representatives however, controversially, there are no English representatives with the possible boycott being one factor at play.

The AFC (Asian Football Confederation), CAF (Confederation of African Football), CONCACAF (Confederation of North, Central American, and Caribbean Association Football), and CONMEBOL (South American Football Confederation) all have six representatives.

Finally the OFC (Oceania Football Confederation) have two referees going to the World Cup.

Right now, it is not known which referees will officiate each game. The final referee briefing is on the 4th of June so we are expecting each matches referee to be announced then.

Below is the full list of referees: (note Fahad Al-Mirdasi will not appear at the tournament after match fixing scandals).

Referee Confederation Country
Fahad Al-Mirdasi AFC Saudi Arabia
Alireza Faghani AFC Iran
Ravshan Irmatov AFC Uzbekistan
Mohammed Abdulla Mohamed AFC United Arab Emirates
Ryuji Sato AFC Japan
Nawaf Abdulla Shukralla AFC Bahrain
Medhi Abid Sharef CAF Algeria
Malang Diedhiou CAF Senegal
Bakary Papa Gassama CAF Gambia
Ghead Grisha CAF Egypt
Janny Sigazwe CAF Zambia
Bamlak Tessema Wayesa CAF Ethiopa
Joel Aguilar CONCACAF El Salvador
Mark W. Geiger CONCACAF USA
Jair Marrufo CONCACAF USA
Ricardo Montero CONCACAF Costa Rica
John Pitti CONCACAF Panama
Cesar Arturo Ramos Palazuelos CONCACAF Mexico
Julio Bascunan CONMEBOL Chile
Enrique Caceres CONMEBOL Paraguay
Andres Cunha CONMEBOL Uruguay
Nestor Pitana CONMEBOL Argentina
Sandro Ricci CONMEBOL Brazil
Wilmar Roldan CONMEBOL Colombia
Matthew Conger OFC New Zealand
Norbert Hauata OFC Tahiti
Felix Brych UEFA Germany
Cuneyt Cakir UEFA Turkey
Sergey Karasev UEFA Russia
Bjorn Kuipers UEFA Netherlands
Szymon Marciniak UEFA Poland
Antonio Miguel Mateu Lahoz UEFA Spain
Milorad Mazic UEFA Serbia
Gianluca Rocchi UEFA Italy
Damir Skomina UEFA Slovenia
Clement Turpin UEFA France

There are also 63 assistant referees for the tournament who will be used in a number of different roles. They could be an assistant, fourth official or will be using the VAR system that has been introduced for the 2018 tournament.

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