The wife of World Cup final referee Howard Webb said yesterday she was amazed her husband was taking charge of the most important game in soccer given how he struggles to keep control of their children.
Webb, who is now a full-time referee having previously been a police sergeant, will be the man in the middle when the Netherlands face Spain in the World Cup final in Johannesburg tomorrow.
The 38-year-old from Rotherham, northern England, will be the first Englishman to take charge of the showpiece match since Jack Taylor refereed the 1974 World Cup final between West Germany and the Netherlands.
In a television interview Kay Webb said her husband’s refereeing career was a source of mystification given his difficulties controlling son Jack and daughters Holly and Lucy.
“I don’t know how he does it,” Mrs Webb said. “He can’t take charge of his own children. I don’t know how he manages it on a football pitch.”
Webb began refereeing as a teenager, having been encouraged by his father Billy who was himself a referee.
“It’s in my blood,” Billy Webb, a former miner, told GMTV. “I encouraged my son to take it up. But when I watched his first game, I encouraged him to pack up.”
“My brother was with me at the time, he was a referee, and he said ‘I can see something in this young lad.’ History has proven him right and me wrong,” Billy Webb said.
“The whole thing is jaw-dropping. I just can’t imagine my son reffing the World Cup final,” he said
Webb will complete a notable double this weekend as he becomes the first referee to have overseen both the Champions League or European Cup final and the World Cup final in the same year.
Taylor, now 70, said he had no worries about Webb’s ability to handle the pressure and if it came to it to award a penalty — Taylor became the first referee to do so in a final in 1974 and ended up awarding two, one to the Dutch to the shock of the German home crowd and then one to Germany.
“It wouldn’t get to him [Webb] at all,” Taylor told the Times. “You don’t get many penalties in World Cup finals — I awarded the first two — but he would call it as he sees it.”
“I’ve been watching his progress carefully over the past two years and he’s an astonishing referee,” Taylor said. “It’s wonderful that he’s been awarded the World Cup final. He thoroughly deserves it.”
“He gets on well with the players most of the time, he’s extremely fit and he looks the part,” he said.
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