Howard Webb is a former English football referee. Cavalier of the Order of the British Empire. Webb's judicial career in the English Premier League began in 2003 and lasted 11 years. In 2014, Howard Webb decided to finish with the arbitration in football.
short biography
Howard Webb was born in Rotherham on July 14, 1971. He is a policeman by profession. In 1998, Webb worked out his first refereeing match. It was a duel of the Football Conference, the games of which he judged for two seasons.
From 2000 to 2003, Howard served as the referee for the Football League. From the 2003/2004 season to the end of his career, Webb has been judging matches of the highest division of English football - the English Premier League. After a year of work in the Premier League, Webb received the title of FIFA arbiter.
Howard Webb's biography is full of controversial points. The judge made 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 Chelsea and Manchester United, Howard Webb scored a penalty against the Blues for a foul outside the penalty area, and at the end of the fight Javier Hernandez, aka Chicharito, scored a goal from an offside position. But even all the referee's mistakes cannot cast doubt on the fact that Webb is one of the best referees 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.
UEFA Champions League Final
At the end of May 2010, Webb was appointed chief referee of the final Champions League draw. The match was played by Inter Milan and Bayern Munich. The game took place in the capital of Spain at the stadium of the football club Real Madrid under the name Santiago Bernabets.
The match ended with the victory of the Italian team with a score of 2: 0. There were no controversial moments in the game. Webb seized the match at the highest level, showing three yellow cards. Two “mustard plasters” were received by players of the German team Martin Demikeles and Mark van Bommel. As part of Inter, defender Christian Kivu saw a yellow light in front of him.
World Cup Final 2010 and Mundial 2014
2010 was the best year in Webb’s career. After the Champions League final, he was on the list of referees who made it to the World Cup matches in South Africa. In mid-July, Howard worked out, arguably the most important match of his refereeing career, the World Cup Final. Howard Webb became the first English referee to judge the World Cup finals as chief referee.
Webb found out about his appointment to the decisive match of the tournament three days before the match. In that fight, the two strongest European teams at that time met: Spain and the Netherlands. For the match, Webb showed 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 warning ending was played in 1986, when players received 6 cards.
For the first half hour of the game, the judge “awarded” with cards three Dutchmen (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, Van Bronhorst and Heitinga received the cards. During the second half of the game, the referee showed one more “mustard” to the players of both teams.
Five more yellow cards were seen by the players in the second overtime. For Haiti, she became second and transformed into red, and the player was forced to leave the field ahead of schedule.
In 2014, Webb went to Brazil to judge the World Cup matches. Unlike the previous world forum, Howard was not assigned to the key matches of the tournament. In total at the 2014 World Cup, he sued two games. His debut match was the group stage duel between Colombia and Côte d'Ivoire. The second game Webb worked for was the match between the hosts of the championship and the national team of Chile in the 1/8 finals.
