All eyes will be on Costa Rica vs Germany on Thursday evening at the World Cup, for multiple reasons.
For starters it’s a decisive Group E fixture and all four teams can still make the last 16 or go home early. And it’s also a game in which history will be made, as Stephanie Frappart will be referee - the first time a female has officiated a men’s World Cup fixture.
The French official will be assisted by Brazilian Neuza Back and Mexican Karen Diaz, as part of an all-female on-field team selected by Fifa.
Breaking barriers is nothing new for the 38-year-old, with Frappart’s performances earning her a role in Ligue 1, France’s top-flight league for men, since 2019.
Since then she has also become the first woman to referee a major men’s European fixture, when she took charge of Liverpool vs Chelsea in the Uefa Super Cup of the same year, while in 2020 she took charge of her first men’s Champions League match.
Frappart’s other notable fixtures include being referee in the Women’s World Cup final in 2019, the Coupe de France final in May of this year and a World Cup qualifier for this competition in Qatar, between Netherlands and Latvia. The latter again made her the first woman to officiate such a Fifa match.
While this will be her first time on the pitch at the 2022 finals, Frappart was named as fourth official earlier in the tournament when Portugal played Ghana.
Former referee Keith Hackett explained to the Independent how Frappart’s elevation to the elite stage has been part of a long-term plan, while Fifa refs chief Pierluigi Collina has insisted that only performances and neutrality will dictate which officials oversee each game, rather than gender or cultural sensitivities.
Earlier this term, Frappart took charge of a Champions League match between Real Madrid and Celtic in which she awarded three penalties - two for the Spanish side and one for the Scots.
Just one straight red card has been doled out in Ligue 1 by Frappart this season in her six games, along with another dismissal for a second booking. Her highest number of yellow cards shown in a league game was seven, back in August.
Ahead of the World Cup she acknowledged there would be additional scrutiny for breaking new ground but remained confident in her unaltering approach. “There is always pressure in the matches. And when you are a woman there is more pressure because it is always new,” she said.
“We know the pressure. But I think we will not change ourselves - be calm, focused, concentrate. And don’t think about the media and everything and be focused on the field. We know there is a lot of expectation, we know that each game is more important, but we also have experience in our competition.
“I made a lot of games with high importance, so with all this experience we will be ready for the matches.”
