Lidya Tafesse Abebe

Lidya Tafesse Abebe (born April 30, 1980 in Jimma ) is an Ethiopian football referee .

Life

As a young woman, Lidya Tafesse Abebe played basketball and also football for a club for seven years. Encouraged by a teacher, she developed an early interest in becoming a referee. Their first encounter, a football game for men, was in Mek'ele in 2000 (1992 according to the Ethiopian calendar ) . After finishing high school, she moved to Addis Ababa , where she graduated with a degree in pharmacy .

She continued to pursue her goal of becoming a high-level referee and gradually began to direct games in the Ethiopian Premier League (both men and women). In 2005 she was the first Ethiopian soccer referee to whistle an international match. In 2012 she took part in the women's Africa Cup for the first time. In 2014, at the Africa Cup in Namibia , she was entrusted with the controversial semi-final match between Cameroon and the Ivory Coast in Windhoek . In 2016 in Cameroon and 2018 in Ghana she was again active at the Africa Cup and again led games in the semi-finals.

In 2015, FIFA invited her to the Women's World Cup in Canada , where she was appointed fourth official . In 2018, she was also nominated for the U-20 Women's World Cup in France, where she led the preliminary round match between Germany and Haiti (3-2). At the 2019 Women's World Cup , she was again part of the match officials team.

Lidya Tafesse Abebe has reported several times that at times it was a great challenge to lead football matches as a woman. When she started there were hardly any female referees. Her example encouraged other women to follow in her footsteps. In 2017 she received the “Women of Excellence” award from the “Association of Women in Business” (AWiB) in Ethiopia.

Web links

• Lidya Tafesse Abebe in the database of weltfussball.de
• Lidya Tafesse Abebe in the Soccerdonna.de database

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Abebe: "You learn for your life" , fifa.com, August 4, 2018
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Lidya Tafesse - A Seasoned Sports Referee , AWiB, August 1, 2017
3. ↑ Mondial féminin: Lydia Tafesse, une Éthiopienne au sifflet en France , Radio France Internationale, June 5, 2019