A female referee will officiate a Serie A game for the first time today, marking a historic day for Italian football. The match between Sassuolo and Salernitana will be officiated by Maria Sole Ferrieri Caputi, over 20 years after the first female assistant referee in the Italian top division.
Maria Sole has already officiated games involving a Serie A team; she presided over Cagliari and Citadel’s Coppa Italia match last year. She made her Serie B debut during the previous season, and this one brought up another cup match involving a Serie A team. After moving up from the regional leagues, she spent the last five seasons of her career there. Her upward mobility has paid off.
Female referees in the men’s game have been steadily increasing, and now it is finally the norm. Stephanie Frappart will be one of the first women referees at this year’s World Cup, which will be held in Qatar. The French official, who has already presided over numerous high-profile matches, is seen as something of a trailblazer in women’s refereeing.
Frappart oversaw an all-female refereeing crew for the European Super Cup match between Liverpool and Chelsea in 2019. That evening’s match between San Marino and Gibraltar in the Nations League featured the first all-female refereeing panel to oversee a men’s international match in 2020. Kateryna served as the official in that situation.
Monzul, who last year came to Italy to avoid the conflict and the Russian invasion of her nation, was permitted to officiate one game in the Serie A women’s league and is currently listed in Torino’s Serie C division. Returning to Frappart, she officiated the first Ligue 1 match in France as a woman in 2019.
The Bundesliga was the first of the top five European leagues to hire a female referee in 2017. Iran’s antigovernmental protests are still going on this week, and Iranian TV has been known to stop airing Bundesliga matches since Bibiana Steinhaus took over. In 2018, they did show one game featuring the referee, but they changed from showing the crowd to showing pictures of the audience.
When Sian Massey-Ellis served as the assistant referee for a Tottenham vs. Manchester United match last season, this also occurred in the Premier League. In order to avoid displaying a woman wearing shorts, the Iranian broadcast cut away. Ten years prior, Massey-Ellis was involved in another contentious incident that resulted in the firing of Richard Keys and Andy Gray from Sky Sports.
Despite being off-air, their demeaning, sexist talk was still filmed and published to a British publication. The two had insulted Wendy Toms, a former assistant referee, and suggested that someone go explain the offside rule to the assistant. Gordon Strachan, the manager of Coventry City, protested that Toms, the Premier League’s first female assistant referee, hadn’t
Although Amy Fearn was the first woman to officiate a Championship game in 2010, there has yet to be a female referee in a Premier League match. Fearn took over as referee on that occasion after the previous official left the game with an injury in the final 20 minutes. In 2013 she was also the first woman to officiate an FA Cup match.
After his team lost a Championship match against QPR in 2006, Mike Newell, the manager of Luton Town, attacked Fearn. He singled out the assistant referee in his rage over his side not receiving a penalty. She has no business being here. Although that may sound sexist, I am sexist. What are the women doing here because this is not park football?