The Ref Stop

How many games are you away from refereeing the Champions League Final

W

Wolfy123

New Member
A typically inane way to pass the time during a rain delay at a cricket match is to discuss how many consecutive hundreds you are away from playing for England in a test match.

I was wondering for a newly qualified L7 how many games do you think it would take to be selected as the referee in the Champions League final?

7-5 30 games
5-4 25 games
4-3 25 games
3-2b 30 games
2b-2a 30 games
2a-1 30 games
SG2 30 games
SG1 - 20 games
UEFA Panel 10 games

230 games. How close do you reckon that is?
 
The Ref Stop
My guess would be that you have two major gaps in this.

I get the impression it's very rare to move up in your first season at any level 4 or above. So as an absolute minimum, I think you need to double all the numbers from 4 to 1, to account for needing 2 seasons at most levels. Adds just over another hundred games.

And then I think the gap from "getting SG1" to "getting the CL final" is massively underestimated. Marciniak's final last season was something like his 40th CL game across 8 seasons. But you're not going to get to just do nothing but UEFA games for 8 seasons and then expect a CL final! So even if we assume you can cut that down to getting a CL final in your 5th season after joining UEFA panel, you're still probably going to have turned up for another ~150 PL games, plus 30 UEFA games plus a handful of domestic cup games in that time, so I reckon you need to add 200 games onto the end of your list as well just to account for that wait.

I'm also assuming you're magically avoiding any responsibility to run lines, as would normally be the case from L5 until you specialise as a referee at 3. But I think you could easily throw on 30-50 mandatory lines in that gap as well.

So overall, I'd be saying nearer 600 games, although around a third of that would be as a top PL referee earning SG1 salary + match fees, so it wouldn't be a bad life waiting at that level for 5 years!
 
GraemeS said:
I get the impression it's very rare to move up in your first season at any level 4 or above.
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It's rare, for sure, but I know of 2 such instances where a level 5 (mid season promo to 4 after COVID) ended the season as a level 3.

And there was a level 4 whom finished his season with a promotion to 2b.

So it is achievable.

I think the number could be a lot lower if you went off of minimum number of games for promotion.
 
Prior to recent history, promotion from 4-3 and 3-2b was achievable on just 10 games. Hence the possibility of rapid ascension with mid-season.
 
Some referees do fly through the levels. Take Stuart Attwell as an example, he was Premier League by the time he was 26 and FIFA the year after, to do that he would have needed to be promoted pretty much every season. Same for Michael Oliver who was Premier League at 25 and FIFA at 2017.

These are very much the exception to the norm though. I can't remember many referees getting promoted in their first season at L4, and even less going 4 to 3 at the first attempt.
 
FirsFox40 said:
According to my lot on Sunday afternoon that WAS the Champions League Final and I was expected to have been at that level.

Although a few moments later when I pulled out a yellow for a biiiiiiiig old shirtpull, it suddenly became “just a friendly” again.
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Ha! I had a RC after 15 mins at the w/e and a punter said “it’s not the champions league!” … i’d take it as a complement!
 
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