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HERBERT FANDEL, UEFA CUP FINAL REFEREE
Andrew Morgan
The referee for the match in Eindhoven tonight will be 42-year-old music-teacher and pianist Herbert Fandel of Germany. But who is he? And what kind of record does he have on the pitch? Here's a little snapshot about the man who has Boro's European glory resting on his whistle.
Fandel became a FIFA referee in January 1998 having worked his way up the German Leagues from 1988. Between 1993 and 1996 he refereed forty-two games in the German Championship, before graduating to the Bundesliga. Over the next two years he took charge of a total of 186 games in Germany's top flight.
Fandel is the first German national to ever officiate in a one-off UEFA Cup final. The last German referee in the centre for the Final was Aron Schmidhuber in 1990, when it was a two-legged affair.
This is his biggest refereeing commitment to date although he does have significant experience, having also taken charge of World Cup qualifiers and Champions League games. He also refereed the 2004 German Cup Final between Werder Bremen and Alemannia Aachen and officiated in the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, his first competitive matches at an international level.
Fandel also refereed the 2006 German Cup Final two weeks ago when Bayern Munchen beat Eintracht Frankfurt 1-0 and there is a chance he could feature in the World Cup in his homeland this summer. The UEFA Cup Final meanwhile will be the twenty-seventh time he has taken charge of a European tie.
Because of this experience, we do not have to look as far as Germany in order to assess his style of refereeing. Fandel is a familiar face to many English fans. It was only on 5th April that he was in charge of Arsenal's Champions' League match against Juventus in Turin, which ended in a 0-0 draw.
Fandel was also the referee in the all-English Champions League group match between Chelsea and Liverpool on 6th December last year. This season he also officiated in Porto when Rangers paid the Portuguese side a visit and featured in arguably his biggest match to date, France's 1-0 win against Ireland in a World Cup qualifier last September.
Fandel however has been no stranger to controversy. In the 0-0 draw between Chelsea and Liverpool earlier this season, the main talking point in a dire game was a dangerously high tackle by Michael Essien on Didi Hamann, which should have seen the Chelsea man being sent off from the field of play. As the BBC said at the time: "Referee Fandel clearly did not see the incident, otherwise Essien would surely have been sent off." It was this that led to the infamous dispute between Moriniho and Benitiez. However in the same game Fandel correctly called a contentious penalty decision that involved John Terry shoulder-charging Luis Garcia.
Fandel is not afraid to make tough decisions either. This was typified by his justified sending-off of Juventus' play-maker Pavel Nedved in the match against Arsenal in early April. Nedved had been booked previously as his frustration over his side's inability to break down the Londoners took over and another rush of blood led to his deserved dismissal. However in Turin with a partisan crowd against him, it still takes guts to send off such a talismatic player.
It was his involvement in another game against Arsenal however that courted the most controversy and ironically, it was also the last game he refereed at the Philips Stadion. On 24th November 2004 PSV hosted Arsenal in a Champions League Group Match and Fandel dismissed not one but two Arsenal players - Lauren and Patrick Vieria. This led to accusations from Arsenal goalkeeper Jens Lehmann that his compatriot was 'very arrogant', particularly as one of the bookings that Lauren had received was for protesting about a lack of a booking for a PSV tackle on Vieria.
Indeed Lehmann also implied that Fandel had a reputation in stating that "It's been said before that the referee is very arrogant and he's proved that he is." Lauren meanwhile insinuated that Fandel was ignoring the fouls by the PSV players, particularly Mark van Bommel, whom he highlighted: "Mark van Bommel was making a lot of fouls but the referee didn't seem to see them. For the second booking, I touched the ball."
The trail of British frustration with Fandel has also stretched to Scotland and more specifically to a UEFA Cup tie that took place in March 2002 when Rangers were knocked out of the competition. The controversy in this game involved a pole-axing tackle by Feyenoord defender Glenn Looven, made in the penalty area on Rangers winger Peter Lovenkrands. No penalty was awarded by Fandel and post-match the Rangers man couldn't hide his incredulity:
"It was a bad challenge and I can't see why we didn't get a penalty for it. The guy couldn't get near the ball and he hit me hard on the throat. First of all I couldn't believe it when the ref didn't give us a penalty. Secondly I was amazed when he wouldn't allow anyone to come on and treat me."
In that game Fandel also gave two controversial free-kicks that allowed Pierre van-Hooijdonk to score two goals but he refused to take the blame for Rangers exit, telling the Sunday Mail: "It's normal for a team to criticise the referee after losing, but I feel I had a good performance. It was clear to me that the free-kicks were justified."
Meanwhile Celtic fanzine Not The View satirised the said incident with considerable glee, stating "The German ref's atrocity was compounded soon after this attempted murder of a perfectly innocent Rangers player. Instead of awarding Feyenoord a free-kick 35 yards out which any competent defence/ goalkeeper would be able to deal with easily, the referee in fact awarded Feyenoord a goal - twice! (at least this was the impression given by the Retard)"
This season meanwhile Fandel has been in charge of only four matches, which have all been international in flavour (three Champions' League games and one World Cup qualifier). In those matches he has booked seventeen players and sent off one. In previous seasons he has had an average of sending off 0-1 players per game and booking between 3 and 4.25, as the table below demonstrates.
| SEASON |
GAMES |
YELLOW |
RED |
YELLOW AVERAGE |
RED AVERAGE |
| 2005/2006 |
4 |
17 |
1 |
4.25 |
0.25 |
| 2004/2005 |
7 |
27 |
4 |
3.86 |
0.57 |
| 2003/2004 |
6 |
18 |
5 |
3.00 |
0.83 |
| 2002/2003 |
20 |
69 |
4 |
3.45 |
0.2 |
| 2001/2002 |
26 |
106 |
8 |
1.08 |
0.31 |
| 2000/2001 |
3 |
11 |
0 |
3.67 |
0.00 |
For a comparison, here are the statistics for six of the more 'popular' English referees this season:
| NAME |
GAMES |
YELLOW |
RED |
YELLOW AVERAGE |
RED AVERAGE |
| Herbert Fandel |
4 |
17 |
1 |
4.25 |
0.25 |
| Steve Bennett |
38 |
126 |
11 |
3.32 |
0.29 |
| Mike Dean |
39 |
122 |
9 |
3.13 |
0.23 |
| Mike Dowd |
46 |
178 |
8 |
3.87 |
0.17 |
| Mark Halsey |
37 |
55 |
6 |
1.49 |
0.16 |
| Graham Poll |
38 |
124 |
4 |
3.26 |
0.11 |
| Uriah Rennie |
44 |
94 |
5 |
2.14 |
0.11 |
| Rob Styles |
44 |
146 |
6 |
3.32 |
0.14 |
As can be seen, Fandel has refereed far fewer games than those of his Premiership counterparts, although this may be because Fandel appears to be exclusively a FIFA referee nowadays. However these are going to seriously influence the statistics as a mere four games is not necessarily a good sample to judge his refereeing style on. However previous years' statistics can also be brought into play to help us here.
What can clearly be seen is that Fandel dishes out more yellow cards than the Premiership referees, with a whopping 4.25 per game as opposed to an average three point something for the others. This does not seem to pass into his red card tally, which although on the high end of average, does not exceed that of Steve Bennett and is similar to that of Mike Dean. However averages of 0.53 and 0.87 red cards per game in the previous two seasons (and indeed with seasons with a similar number of games for Fandel as this season) suggest that he is not afraid of sending players off and thus the Boro lads must be careful on Wednesday. The statistics look like he will stamp his authority on the game and will take no nonsense from any player.
So it appears that on Wednesday the Boro players should be even more careful about getting into the book, as Fandel is a referee who is not afraid of cautioning players. This would mean that the players could be walking a tight-rope for the rest of the game, hoping that they would not get sent off. And if the previous cases of his involvement with British clubs are anything to go by, he's not afraid of being controversial or taking the big decisions either. Boro must beware.
Sites used: Andy's Stats, the Telegraph Online, www.soccerbase.com, www.4thegame.com, Not the View at http://www.ntvcelticfanzine.com/hackwatching/hacks%20100%20uefa.htm
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