On April 13, the Chinese Football Association announced the selection list of referees for the sixth round of the 2024 Chinese Super League. In the match between Shanghai SIPG and Shandong Luneng, Xie Lijun, a women’s international assistant referee from the Sichuan Football Association, will appear in this match as the second assistant referee. She has therefore become the first domestic referee of a top men’s football professional league. Female referee.
It is understood that the Chinese Football Association has long been interested in responding to FIFA’s call and making an attempt to arrange female referees to participate in the law enforcement of domestic men’s football professional series events.
Screenshot of the official website of the Chinese Super League
Xie Lijun is an elite assistant referee of the AFC. She has refereed the 2022 Women's Asian Cup, the 2022 U17 Women's World Cup, and the 2024 U20 Women's Asian Cup finals. She has also refereed many FIFA women's football matches. He is the only Chinese referee at the 2023 Women's World Cup.
Currently, Xie Lijun has arrived in Shanghai to start the final preparations. According to the plan, she will also go to France to enforce the "Morris Cup" international event in May this year.
In fact, Xie Lijun is not a referee with a "professional background". The 34-year-old's experience in the past 20 years has nothing to do with football. Before going to Sichuan University of Arts and Sciences to study as an undergraduate in 2009, her specialty was track and field. Seeing her strong physical fitness and core abilities, her teacher Fu Hong suggested that she learn to be a football referee. In 2012, after studying refereeing for three years, Xie Lijun participated in the Chinese Football Association's preparatory national referee training class after being recommended by the Sichuan Football Association.
Xie Lijun said that now she trains for 1.5-2 hours every day to maintain physical fitness and core abilities. Xie Lijun revealed that she has refereed men's football matches before, from teenagers to adults, from amateurs to professionals, but this is the first time she has refereed men's football top leagues. After the 2023 Women's World Cup, Xie Lijun has refereed the U20 Men's Football Invitational Tournament. "After all, it is a youth game. The intensity of the confrontation and the difficulty of penalties are definitely not comparable to the Chinese Super League."
In the history of international football, female referees have enforced the law Scenes of men's football matches are rare. It was only during the 2022 Qatar World Cup that FIFA enabled female referees such as Stephanie Frappart (France) to participate in the law enforcement process of the Men's Football World Cup. The Premier League did not use the first female referee Rebecca Welch to officiate games until December 2023. Reporter Xue Jian
(Source: Sichuan Guan News)
