Who is the referee in the Classic?

Women’s football has grown tremendously in just a few years. And this growth involves a series of undeniable advantages, such as popularity and media attention, and some disadvantages that prove that the soufflé of interests is inevitable because there are more people and more passions the pending This Sunday, a Barça-Real Madrid Classic of the F League is being played at Montjuïc (12pm/DAZN) and, unlike men’s football, hardly anyone has talked about the refereeing before. This is notable because the week was preceded by a certain controversial performance of the referee in the premiere of the Champions League, a match between Real Madrid and Chelsea in which the English team was punished with a penalty for a foul committed when clearly out of place and wrongly not allowing a goal late in the match to break the final tie at two. Complaints were mostly reduced to the local ‘Brittish’ level, a storm in a teapot. So, although the competitions were different, the appointment of María Eugenia Gil Soriano for her first Clásico went almost unnoticed.

Born in Mérida in 1996 but assigned to the Galician College, Gil Soriano also manages matches in the Men’s Second Federation after achieving promotion to silver level in the excellence program of the Technical Committee of Referees of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF). She has now spent four seasons in the Women’s First Division and her extraordinary physical level stands out, because in addition to refereeing she is an athlete (400 meters). For the main match of the F League, between the leader and the second place, the Technical Committee of Referees understood that none of its internationals should lead.

The important thing, however, is that this season, although with relative impact, more and more voices have been heard that understand the implementation of VAR as essential to all professional levels of women’s football, a non-existent video arbitration in the group stage. of the Champions League and in League F. “We deserve the same justice,” said Blaugrana Patri Guijarro in Thursday’s Clásico preview, demanding VAR. In League F there was also no shortage of complaints from some players.

In 2021, the Competition decided to suspend Mapi León, Barça centre-back, with a four-game suspension for a tweet after his dismissal against Real Madrid.

It is worth emphasizing the limited impact that the wife of the former international referee and current delegate of Real Madrid, Carlos Megía Dávila, has been responsible for the refereeing of Spanish women, Yolanda Parga, since January 2022.

Until the 2016-17 season, the Women’s Soccer League was refereed by male referees from Second B, but starting from the 2017-18 season, the Technical Committee of Referees promoted a regulation according to which all referees in League F are women. The desirable goal is that, sooner rather than later, they have all the tools at their disposal so that refereeing can grow at a pace comparable to women’s football.