FIFA (International Football Federation) released this Thursday (9) the list of referees who will act in the next World Cup, in the United States, Mexico and Canada. Brazil will have nine representatives on the refereeing team, with three main judges, five assistants and a VAR (video assistant referee).
The list of those who will be with the whistle in North America includes Raphael Claus (SP), Wilton Pereira Sampaio (GO) and Ramon Abatti Abel (SC). The linesmen will be Bruno Boschillia (PR), Bruno Pires (GO), Danilo Manis (SP), Rodrigo Figueiredo (RJ) and Rafael Alves (RS). And Rodolpho Toski Marques (PR) will act as video judge.
The biggest World Cup in history, the first with 48 teams, will have a total of 104 matches. To meet this demand from June 11th to July 19th, FIFA selected a total of 52 referees, 88 assistants and 30 video referees. No other country has as many names on the list as Brazil, which was celebrated by the CBF (Brazilian Football Confederation).
“It’s not just a statistical data. It’s a reflection of serious, consistent work that is increasingly aligned with the standards of excellence in world football. This representation reinforces FIFA’s confidence in Brazilian arbitration”, said Netto Góes, who has just taken over as director of arbitration at the CBF.
The confederation, however, has had to deal with a number of arbitration crises recently. The sector was taken over by former referee Rodrigo Martins Cintra in February, when the CBF president was still Ednaldo Rodrigues and fired Wilson Luiz Seneme. Samir Xaud took over the entity in May and soon had to face new turbulence.
In October, after a disastrous round in the Brazilian Championship, he removed referees and video referees responsible for serious errors. One of them was Ramon Abatti Abel, removed from the roster until November to “be conditioned to training, improvement and internal evaluation, for later return to activities”.
Since then, the CBF has announced a series of measures to improve the whistle, the main one being what it called the “arbitration professionalization program”. 72 referees were selected and received monthly salaries, in addition to performance bonuses, with an estimated investment of R$195 million for the 2026/27 biennium.
Last Tuesday (8), the entity announced the creation of a specific board for arbitration. The new department is headed by Netto Góes, who started working with the head of the arbitration commission, Rodrigo Martins Cintra. With it, the confederation says it “reinforced the governance structure of Brazilian arbitration, following the standard recommended by FIFA”.
“The arrival of Netto, who over the last six months has been with us on a day-to-day basis in the operation and knows the referees in depth, is very welcome, because we are joining forces. What we all want after the first step, which is professionalization, is to bring Brazilian arbitration to be one of the great powers in world arbitration in the coming years”, said Cintra.
