Crédito: Dan Mullan/Getty Images
The 38-year-old Frenchwoman is not a new figure in major competitions: she has been standing out in the world of arbitration for years and since 2019 she has led the ranking of the best referees in the world, according to the International Federation of Football History and Statistics (IFFHS).
“I started as a player, I started playing in a division, and then I wanted to know the rules of the game, I was only interested in that, and I started taking some courses,” she told CNN in an interview in 2019. At that time, she recalled, the women’s football was not as developed as it is now. She opted for arbitration “and the choice was the right one.”
When she started training, there were no women in her group. He trained with men and began to referee men. “Sometimes they asked (the reasons for being a judge) because they wanted to know and comment on the decision. I tried to explain, but sometimes it’s quite difficult to understand,” she said.
In 2019, the French woman became the first woman to referee a men’s final of European football, in a match between Liverpool and Chelsea. Two years later, she was the first to occupy the main position in a UEFA World Cup qualifying match in Qatar. The match she refereed was Netherlands vs. Latvia in Amsterdam.
She has also been a judge in matches in the French league and in the second division of the European league.