‘I am not a man, I can’t follow one of them’: The referee making football history

Googling ‘female football referee’ makes for startling reading. A quick scroll and you can take your pick from what I’m sure must all be groundbreaking journalistic works. There’s: ‘Hottest Female Football Referees (Most Searched In 2022)’. Or perhaps you’d prefer: ‘The 10 Hottest And Most Sexy Female Football Referees In The World’? Very important to be both hot and sexy, I’m sure you’ll agree.

There is also, buried on that first search page, a link to the Wikipedia entry for a woman called Stéphanie Frappart. If you’ve never heard of her, you’re about to. Tonight she will make history as the first woman to referee a men’s World Cup match when she leads an all-female refereeing team for the Germany-Costa Rica game. Ninety-two years of the tournament, and yet Frappart will be the first woman to take charge of a game.

It’s not the first time the French referee has achieved a first in football. In 2019 the 38-year-old, who grew up in the Val d’Oise, just north of Paris, became the first female ref to take charge in a major European men’s showpiece game when she refereed a UEFA Super Cup match between Liverpool and Chelsea. “I hope it serves as an example to female referees, and to any young girls who may aspire to be a referee,” she said at the time.

In 2019, former player Pierre Bouby called Frapart “the best referee in Ligue 2. Her voice is quiet but she has charisma and personality. She uses the right words. She explains. She’s diplomatic and you can talk to her. She doesn’t try to make herself the centre of attention. She is all about what’s best for the game.”

Considered a trailblazer, Frappart began refereeing at just 13 in local youth games. She has spoken of how coming up through refereeing she “didn’t have any role models”. She told the Athletic this month: “I think everybody is unique, so you can’t base your personality on someone else. You have to grow yourself. I am not a man, I can’t follow one of them.”

She is fully aware of the pressure that will be on her during the match. “The men’s World Cup is the most important competition in the world, not only football. But I was the first female referee in France, the first in Europe, every time the first. I know how to deal with that.”

She has the support of the teams she will be refereeing. German coach Hansi Flick said: “I trust her 100 per cent. [...] I think she deserves to be here due to her performance and her achievements. We’re looking forward to this match and I hope that she is looking forward to this match as well. I think she will perform very well.”

Frappart is one of three female refs and three assistant refs who form part of the 129-strong team of match officials at this World Cup. Alongside Frappart there’s Yoshimi Yamashita from Japan, Salima Mukansanga from Rwanda, Neuza Back from Brazil, Karen Díaz Medina from Mexico and Kathryn Nesbitt from the USA.

In a year when (in this country at least) we were given solid proof, if we ever needed any, that women can, in fact, play football, it’s strange to think there is still a long list of ‘firsts’ to be had in the game. Our Lionesses are champions of Europe and some of the most respected athletes in the country, but female officials are still a rare sight at international tournaments. It wasn’t so long ago that former Sky Sports presenters Richard Keys and Andy Gray were disgraced when they were exposed as having made derogatory comments about a female assistant referee off-air during a Liverpool match. Talking about Sian Massey-Ellis, Keys was recorded saying: “Somebody better get down there and explain offside to her.” Gray replied: “Yeah, I know. Can you believe that? Female linesman. Forget what I said – they probably don’t know the offside rule.”

Charming. Massey-Ellis, a successful Premier League assistant referee, said last year the perception that female refs “don’t know what we’re doing” has “always been there”. You need a thick skin to be a referee of any gender, but a female ref needs to be made of Teflon. The insults and abuse coming from the touchline are of a particular breed. FIFA referee Stacey Pearson once sent off an assistant manager for saying she should be “doing the washing up”. “Get in the kitchen” is the astonishingly clever insult often hurled at Melany Bermejo, from Peru, through the course of her refereeing career. “You have to make double the effort a man makes,” Mexican referee Lixy Enriquez once said. You also, invariably, have to hold down a second job in order to earn a living. Rebecca Welch, one of the top female referees in Britain, had a full-time job in the NHS until 2019. Last year, she became the first woman to referee an English Football League match.

There are some benefits to being a woman in the firing line. Welch has said male colleagues note she is met with less aggression from players. “Players get to a certain point with me and then they think, ‘I can’t step over the mark’,” she told the BBC. “If it works in my favour then, fair enough.”

Massey-Ellis has said women shouldn’t have to ask themselves the question she once did: “Can I be a referee?” The tide may finally be turning. As female officials have slowly become more visible, eventually being picked for Premier League games and international fixtures, the hope is that matches like today’s could open the door once and for all. In the past year, the FA has seen a 21 per cent increase in the number of female referees “across all levels”.

FIFA’s head of refereeing, Pierluigi Collina, said when it came to referee selection for this World Cup, gender didn’t come into it.

“In this way, we clearly emphasise that it is quality that counts for us and not gender. I would hope that in the future, the selection of elite women’s match officials for important men’s competitions will be perceived as something normal and no longer as sensational. They deserve to be at the FIFA World Cup because they constantly perform at a really high level, and that’s the important factor for us.”