We are one year on from the English FA transferring responsibility for Women’s Super League and Women’s Championship match officials to the Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL).
There is still no timeframe for the full professionalisation of referees operating in the top two tiers of the women’s game in England, despite a clamouring for improvement, but the passionate and pioneering referee Bibiana Steinhaus-Webb is leading the push.
Having begun refereeing in the Frauen Bundesliga in 1999, the 43-year-old German became the first woman to referee in the men’s Bundesliga in the 2017-18 season. Now she oversees officiating in England.
She says: “The English competition is one of the strongest in the world and it definitely attracted me to this job as well as Kelly Simmons (the FA’s head of the women’s professional game) and Mike Riley (general manager of the PGMOL), who have been very …
- April 28, 2022
