Europe's Best Referee 2012/13: Björn Kuipers

The Third Team and its blog referee observers are pleased to honour Dutch Elite referee Björn Kuipers as Europe's Best Referee of the past 2012/13 UEFA campaign. He is followed by Slovenian Damir Skomina on the second and by Turkish Cüneyt Çakır on the third place.

Our number 1 of the past season: Björn Kuipers (NED) (c) gelderlander.nl

Björn Kuipers obviously managed to convince the majority of the voters having performed extra-ordinary well in every single match, specially in the Champions League clash between Barcelona and Paris S.G. in the quarterfinals as well as in the semifinal between Borussia Dortmund and Real Madrid. His tremendous season was crowned by appointments for the Dutch Cup final and Europa League final in Amsterdam. 9 out of 10 voters rated him as no.1 in their individual ranking. Kuipers will also be present at 2013 Confederations Cup starting tomorrow.

Serbian Milorad Mažić is the only match official being present in the top 10 list who did not join the Elite category in the past season.

Congratulations to all the officials who are involved in this ranking.

Each of our observers transmitted a list featuring their individual top 10. The referee on the first place got 15 points, the second placed official got 12, the third got 10. The further seven referees got 3-9 points respectively. Only international achievements in the major UEFA and FIFA competitions starting from 31 August 2012 (Super Cup final 2012) until today have been taken into account.

Our entire top 10 list:

1. Björn Kuipers - Netherlands - 147 points

2. Damir Skomina - Slovenia - 96 points

3. Cüneyt Çakır - Turkey - 93 points

4. Milorad Mažić - Serbia - 76 points

5. Howard Webb - England - 68 points

6. Felix Brych - Germany - 47 points

7. Nicola Rizzoli - Italy - 44 points

8. Jonas Eriksson - Sweden - 40 points

9. Svein Oddvar Moen - Norway - 29 points

10. Pavel Královec - Czech Republic - 24 points

Other referees who reached a binary number of points but did not reach the final ranking (in chronological order): William Collum (Scotland), Pedro Proença (Portugal), Viktor Kassai (Hungary), Ivan Bebek (Croatia), Stéphane Lannoy (France) and Sergei Karasev (Russia)