The legendary home referee has retired

Retired football referee Viktor Kassai, who led the 2008 Olympic and 2011 Champions League finalists.

"I'm thirty years of refereeing to face new challenges. I spent 20 years at the forefront of the Hungarian league, and at international level I had basically everything I could aim for. Three decades is a long time. I decided to start a new era in my life. I want to move away from football, I have been training myself in sports management lately and I hope that I can be successful in this field as well, "quoted the website of the Hungarian Association of Kosice.

The 44-year-old referee also thanked the federation, the leaders, the teammates who helped, because, according to him, he couldn't have succeeded without them.

In addition to Kassai, his assistant György Ring will also retire. As a beacon, Ring participated in 285 NB I meetings and participated in two European Championships and the 2016 Club World Championships in addition to the 2011 BL Finals.

Kassai has been leading the line since 1999, and in November of this year, he broke Zsolt Szabó's record with a 322 NB I match, ending with 323 meetings. At the international level, he burst in 2008 when he was on the reserve as a reserve and then blew the whistle at the Beijing Five-Ring Finals.

He made four matches at the 2010 World Cup, including the Spanish-German semifinals, and a year later he led the Barcelona-Manchester United BL final as the highlight of his career. This year he was named the best referee at the International Organization for the History and Statistics of Football (IFFHS).

The biggest mistake of the athlete's career has been a major contributor to the introduction of goal line technology, as he failed to score a home match in the 2012 European Championship, his second match, in Ukrainian-English, although the ball crossed the goal line. Because of this, he did not get another job in the tournament.

Despite this mistake, Kassai led the semifinals in the BL in 2013 and the European League in 2016, and has been able to contend for the Continental Fight in recent years and has been awarded the Franco-Romanian Opening Match and fourth in the final, just as in the BL final served as referee.

It is also important for sports history that he was the first referee to use the help of a video referee at the 2016 Club World Cup.

(Source: sportrajongo.hu, m4sport, mti / Photo: pixabay, mti)