FIFA BADGES PRESENTED TO REFEREES

For the third year running the Refereeing Department within the Malta Football Association organised a special activity to present the FIFA badges to the Referees and Assistant Referees. This activity is one of a series of new initiatives of the Referees' Department since the startof the reform in this sector in June 2011. On this occasion the International Referees and Assistant Referees nominated by the Malta FA and confirmed by FIFA were presented with the FIFA badges by the MFA president, Norman Darmanin Demajo during a specific evening event held at the Ballroom of the Grand Hotel Excelsior, Floriana. For the year 2014 Malta had to reduce one Referee and two Assistant Referees from the FIFA list since the World Body initiated a process of pruning down the number of officials from various countries so that it will be in a position to allocate more matches to each international referee. In this way the anomaly of referees being assigned only one match every year will be eliminated. The match officials presented with the FIFA Badge were Esther Azzopardi Farrugia, Marco Borg, Clayton Pisani and Alan Mario Sant as Referees, Alan Camilleri, William Debattista, Christopher Francalanza, Mitchell Scerri, Edward Spiteri and ingmar Spiteri as Assistant Referees, Franco Farrugia as FIFA Futsal Referee and Stefan Pace and Jude Amin Utulu as FIFA Beach Soccer Referees.