I also saw that yahoo page a couple of weeks ago. When I did a quick count of the referees, it seemed that a couple were missing since FIFA had announced that 23 were selected along with their ARs, but this list only had
21 Refs. Therefore, I went and did some checking.
Here is FIFA's initial selection list:
http://www.fifa.com/en/media/index/0...116346,00.html
Three Referees and their teams were then removed:
http://www.fifa.com/en/media/index/0...117658,00.html
1. Batres from Guatemala could not physically recover from an ACL injury. He was replaced by Mexico's Marco Rodriguez.
2. "Greek referee Kyros Vassaras and his Spanish counterpart Manuel Mejuto Gonzalez had also been due to take part in the FIFA World Cup finals, but as some of their assistants failed to reach the required standards in Frankfurt/Neu-Isenburg, Vassaras and Mejuto Gonzalez have also been taken off the list. They will be replaced by two original members of the support and development group, Italy's Roberto Rosetti and Spain's Luis Medina Cantalejo."
3. The US team headed by Kevin Stott originally did not make the top 30, but were placed onto the support group after the above changes were made.
Then I found that Italy's De Santis was withdrawn due to the match fixing investigation currently going on in that country. FIFA chose NOT to replace that team, so the count is down to
22.
http://www.fifa.com/en/organisation/...ticleid=118061
Finally, I found a press release from today by FIFA which states that their will be media interviews with "all 81 match officials." Well 22 and 44 is 66, and adding the 15 in the support group makes 81. So this seems to be the accurate number.
http://www.fifa.com/en/media/index/0...ticleid=118071
So I have to ask what happened to the team from the Caribbean?
| Referee : | PRENDERGAST | Peter | Jamaica | 23.09.1963 |
| Assistants : | GARWOOD | Anthony | Jamaica | 15.12.1972 |
| TAYLOR | Joseph | Trinidad and Tobago | 06.10.1964 |
Did yahoo mistakenly leave them off the list?