Howard Webb Given World Cup Game
18th June, 2014
The president of the Toolstation Northern Counties East League, Howard Webb, will take charge of his first game at the 2014 FIFA World Cup on Thursday.
He will be the man-in-the-middle for the Group C clash between Colombia and Ivory Coast in Brasilia and it will be the fifth time that Howard, who began his officiating career in our league, has refereed in the tournament.
He was involved in four games in South Africa four years ago, including the final.
"I feel very privileged to represent the guys, not just the 17 other Select Group referees but all our assistant colleagues, all the Football League referees and all the 27,000 referees in the country," he told premierleague.com. "It's an amazing honour to go out there and fly the flag for English refereeing and I really hope that I do everybody proud.
"Standards are rising all the time. There's never been as good a list of Select Group referees across so many measures. Of course it is competitive, we all want to get to the very top and because of that, standards are increasingly raised.
"It was more difficult for me to be appointed to this World Cup than it was to the last one because the standard of officials around me."
All at the NCEL wish Howard all the very best for the game and for the rest of the tournament.