RateTheRef

Super appointment for Hartegan. Heard particurlarly good things about Jovanovic. No surprise with Byrch and Cakir for the English games, safe pairs of hands. Can't say I know a lot about either Buquet or Sidirópoulos.

Buquet has deserved promotion for many years but at first that was a political choice to strongly push Turpin (different thing is that he proved to be an excellent referee but only after promotion to elite), then Bastien was simply younger and last season Buquet failed in his last game (who knows, maybe he would've been promoted to elite in case of good performance in Sevilla v Slavia Prague). In general, a very safe pair of hands and surely someone stuck between elite and first group.

Sidirópoulos was rightly promoted to elite but never convinced the referee committee in order to get bigger games. He's surely classified as 'lower' elite category along with such names like Aytekin, Karasyov, Královec, etc. It's difficult for him to be prepared for big games as he can't handle such in domestic league, due to enormous pressure from psychofans (setting fire to referees' cars and houses). That's why the Greek federation decided to hire average foreign referees for top clashes instead of their top referees last season. This season, they decided to appoint their referees (till now) but focus is rather on Papadópoulos and non-FIFA referees at the moment. Surely edy will correct me if I'm wrong. All Sidirópoulos' games in UEFA competitions should be deemed as tests / occasion to prove he's up to the task, and in general I think he is but the above mentioned factors have impact on him.