Ľuboš Micheľ

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Ľuboš Micheľ (born May 16, 1968 in Stropkov, Slovakia) is a Slovak football referee.

Micheľ became a FIFA referee at the age of 25. One big milestone in his career was refereeing the 2003 UEFA Cup final between FC Porto and Celtic. He also appeared at the 2002 FIFA World Cup and Euro 2004, refereeing the quarter-final between Sweden and the Netherlands. Micheľ came in third place in voting for the title of The World's Best Referee 2005. He was also selected as a referee for the 2006 FIFA World Cup.

1 Trivia
2 History Maker
3 Euro 2004
4 World Cup 2006
5 External links

[edit] Trivia

Micheľ is a manager, and was previously a teacher. He speaks English, Russian, German and Polish in addition to his native Slovak. He founded the society Talent to support young Slovak football players. Micheľ has been a Member of National Council of the Slovak Republic since 2006. However, he was not present at the welcome ceremony for new MPs, since he was as a referee at FIFA World Cup 2006 at that time.

[edit] History Maker

When Micheľ took charge of the Paraguay - South Africa game at World Cup 2002, which ended in a 2 - 2 draw, he became the first Slovak to referee a FIFA World Cup Finals match. (Three Slovak referees Martin Macka (1958), Karol Galba (1962,1966) and Vojtech Christov (1982,1986) count to Czechoslovakia).

[edit] Euro 2004

Micheľ officiated at Euro 2004, taking charge of 3 games, issuing 16 yellows but 0 reds. At an average of 5.33 cards per game, he was sixth on the cards per game table, behind Lucilio Batista (10), Urs Meier (7), and Manuel Enrique Gonzalez, Valentin Ivanov and Mike Riley (5.5).

[edit] World Cup 2006

Micheľ was selected as one of 21 referees for the 2006 World Cup in Germany. After his performance in the first two rounds, FIFA chose him as one of twelve referees to officiate the final eight games of the tournament. Micheľ has handed out the second highest number of cards per match (8) of any referee in the tournament. The only person with a higher tally is Valentin Ivanov, who has handed out an average of ten.

Micheľ matches have been considered tempestuous. In the group stage he took charge of the game between Portugal and Mexico; the game ending 2 - 1 to the Portuguese. He issued 8 yellow cards, sent a player off for diving, gave two penalties, and rejected a claim for one in the second half.

In the Round of 16 he took charge of the Brazil-Ghana match, won by Brazil 3-0. Controversy arose when his assistant failed to call an offside on a play that led to a Brazilian goal. He sent off one Ghanaian player for diving and ordered the Ghana coach, Ratomir Dujković, to leave the field after the coach argued with him about the offside goal. The Ghanaian coach accused Micheľ of bias, but those remarks were reproached by Brazil national team coach Carlos Alberto Parreira, who said that the protesting of the sort that Dujković did is what "losers" do. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/world_cup_2006/teams/ghana /5111574.stm].

After the match, however, Michel put up controversial behaviour by sticking out his tongue at the Ghana Football Association (GFA) spokesman, Randy Abbey. He also asked Ronaldo for his jersey, a move that sparked outrage among the Ghanaian public and the African continent as a whole.

Micheľ refereed the quarterfinals loss of Argentina to the hosts Germany, which was tied 1-1 and went into extra time and ended on penalty kicks. He handed out seven yellows during the match. Micheľ gave a red card to Argentina's unused substitute Leandro Damián Cufré for kicking Per Mertesacker during the post-game melee involving the two teams and some members of their coaching staffs. [1]