Karen Díaz Medina of Mexico officiates a Liga MX game Aug. 27 in Mexico City. “If you want to be a professional football official, follow your own path, accept it and fight with all your passion,” she said.
(Agustin Cuevas / Getty Images)
DOHA, Qatar — In her old day job as an analytical chemist, Kathryn Nesbitt studied brain chemicals in an effort to learn how that organ worked. Trying to understand the origins of rational thought did her little good in her side job as a soccer official, however, because with FIFA rational thought has long been an oxymoron.
That might be changing.
For more than a century, FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, banned women from refereeing men’s matches, a policy that began to ease after the Bundesliga, the English Premier League, MLS and other domestic leagues allowed females to officiate their games, and they proved more than equal to the task. So two years ago, FIFA showed signs it, too, was becoming more enlightened when it put a woman, Brazilian Edina Alves, in charge of the club World Cup final.
But the World Cup? Surely that was another four years off, Nesbitt thought — right up until she got the call telling her she would be one of six women officials calling games in Qatar this fall.
“I never thought this could happen in 2022,” said Nesbitt, who three years ago quit her job as a professor and researcher at Towson University near Baltimore to devote herself to officiating full time. “This one wasn’t even on my radar. It’s a big deal in the sense that they were ready for this before anyone thought the world would be ready for it.”
