Other Leagues Thread- Ligue 1, Championship, Portugal, etc

[TedLavie]

On 09/06/2019 at 2:33 AM, mse326 said:

Don't know where to put this question, or if anyone will even know. 

Do you have to be a citizen of a country to ref it's top flight league? For instance can a non English or Welshman ref in the EPL? A non Spaniard in La Liga? And can you ref in Champions league if you are not European but ref in one of those countries, say an American reffing in Italy? Or does refereeing pretty much follow nationality.

For France refs have to come from the federation training system. I guess theroatically you can be a ref in France if you're a foreigner but you'd need to do all your training and pass all your exams and start your career on lower level leagues (several years) in France. Not sure if you have any diploma equivalence if you have years of experience in another top league but given how closed and unionized is the ref environment in France, I doubt it. 

I think we did have once an exchange of refs with Swiss first league as an experiment if my memory serves me right. But that's about it.