MFA President Norman Darmanin Demajo praised the level of local referees and the good work carried out by the Referees’ Department during a meeting of the Council of the Malta Football Association on Monday. He also remarked that the marks obtained by Maltese referees in UEFA matches are consistently at the expected level.
Going through various UEFA Observer Reports about local Match officials in UEFA matches, MFA President Norman Darmanin Demajo highlighted the outstanding mark of 8.6 obtained by Elite Assistant Referee Roberto Vella in England’s Under 17 important win against Estonia at the A. Le Coq Arena in Talinn recently.
The match, controlled by FIFA Referee Jovan Kaludjerovic from Montenegro, was part of a UEFA qualifying mini-tournament with the participation of Estonia, England, Northern Ireland and Wales. FIFA Referee Clayton Pisani was one of the referees in this tournament and acted as 4th Official in the England vs Estonia match.
In his report, UEFA Observer Konrad Plautz from Austria gave credit to Maltese Elite Assistant Referee Roberto Vella for his outstanding performance and decisiveness in the actions leading to both England’s goals. In Konrad Plautz’s words, Roberto Vella “excellently mastered the two very difficult situations to be assessed in terms of being off-side actively or inactively before the two goals for England.”
MFA Director of Refereeing Adrian D. Casha expressed the Referees’ Department’s satisfaction by stating that: “the 8.6 mark obtained by Roberto Vella in a match described by the UEFA Observer as ‘quite challenging’ confirms the very good standard of local match officials. It is very rarely that UEFA Observers, myself included, award marks higher than 8.4.”
Adrian D. Casha added that “Roberto Vella has been in tremendous form in the past year or so and is one of 7 newly introduced assistant referees in the Premier League in the past 18 months, which confirms the pro-activeness taken by the Referees’ Committee to look for talent in the lower categories and promote them to the Elite Category.”
It is to be noted that Roberto Vella was awarded a Diploma by UEFA in April 2012 for his excellent participation in CORE (Centre of Refereeing Excellence) alongside Elite Referee Adrian Azzopardi and Elite Assistant Referee Duncan Sultana.
Photo: Copyright © Paul Zammit Cutajar