The world's watching - Winnipeg Free Press

The world's watching
Millions of rabid soccer fans will see Winnipeg assistant referee Hector Vergara follow his World Cup dream

Fri Jun 9 2006

Paul Wiecek



IT is a rare person who can do their job in front of the watchful eyes of 300 million people and the lenses of 20 television cameras poised to catch the slightest mistake.
It is rarer still to find a person who wants to work -- indeed, dreams to work -- under that kind of scrutiny.

Put the two together -- the ability to perform under the most intense pressure imaginable, coupled with the motivation to do so -- and you have that rarest of human beings, the World Cup soccer referee.


If they do their job well, no one notices them. And if they make a mistake? There were riots in Italy in 2002 after a particularly bad call at a World Cup game against South Korea.

So what kind of person aspires to a job in which the worst-case scenario is you cause civil unrest on a global scale and the best-case scenario is no one even noticed you were there?
As it turns out, it's the same kind of person who ejected his brother from a game in Winnipeg -- more than once.

It's the kind of man who jokingly gives his children, ages three and one, yellow and red cards for misbehaviour at their Whyte Ridge home.

It's the kind of man who single-mindedly pursued a career as a soccer referee from the age of 16 with the same kind of passion, zeal and commitment other Winnipeg boys put into playing hockey.

He's Winnipeg's Hector Vergara, who this month will make history in Germany when he becomes the first Canadian to officiate in two World Cups, and one of just a few dozen officials from any country ever to do so.

"To go to one World Cup is very difficult," says Vergara, who made his World Cup debut as an assistant referee in 2002. "To go to two World Cups is almost impossible."

"This is unprecedented," says Kevan Pipe, head of the Canadian Soccer Association. "Hector has joined the elite of the elite of the world soccer community.

"Canada is not going to the World Cup as a competing nation, but we are going with Hector Vergara as an on-field official. It's something all Canadians can be proud of."

It is also a monumental achievement for a man whose parents fled Chile three decades ago seeking a better life in Canada, only to find themselves forced to take blue-collar jobs once they arrived because their teaching credentials didn't qualify here. So Ana and Hector Vergara Sr. took manual-labour jobs and embarked on a mission familiar to many Canadian immigrants -- to make life better for their children than it was for them.

For Hector Jr., who was 11 when his family came to Canada, that meant his parents put the same kind of commitment into his budding refereeing career as most Canadian parents put into their kids' hockey careers.

"My dad would drive me around the city all summer to different fields so I could referee," Hector Jr. recalled. "It was that kind of support from my family back then, and my wife now, that's allowed me to get to this high level."

Think Vergara has overcome long odds? Consider what his wife, Joanne, has done.

Born with a birth defect that required amputation of both her legs below the knee, she went on to set six world records and win six gold medals in swimming at the 1988 and 1992 Paralympics.

Joanne Vergara says it's her husband who's had the toughest obstacles to overcome.

"In swimming, it's you against the clock," said Joanne, 34. "It's black and white -- who went the fastest against the clock that day.

"But as a referee, you're dealing with crowds reacting emotionally and passionately, and in this day and age, with TV and replays and all of that, it's even tougher to do his job.

"But he's just one of these people who has the confidence to make the calls and stand behind his judgments. He doesn't worry too much about what the crowds think." So what's it like living with a referee? "We're both incredibly competitive and it comes out in all kinds of silly ways," she says.

"And he'll joke sometimes that he's giving the kids a red or yellow card, but he knows better than to do that to his wife."

Vergara got his start refereeing minor soccer games in St. Charles as a teenager. He never gave it up, even as his career took him to a job as bid co-ordinator for the 1999 Pan Am Games and later to being the chief administrative officer of the Manitoba Soccer Association.

While some referees in Europe, like the recently retired Pierluigi Collina, have achieved fame and fortune, Vergara says that for him, it's a hobby.

A hobby, not surprisingly, that has had its controversial moments, none more so than last December when he called back three goals by Liverpool against Sao Paulo in the final of the World Club Championship in Japan.

Sao Paulo went on to win 1-0 and Vergara became Liverpool's whipping boy, even though replays showed all three of his calls were correct.

Within days, messages from irate Liverpool fans began piling up on the Manitoba Soccer Association website, where Vergara had been posting photos of his trip to Japan.

One accused him of taking bribes, even as the Liverpool coach suggested to reporters that a Canadian had no business officiating such a big game.

"Some of them were pretty upset," says Vergara. "But I also got a handful of messages from people who live in Liverpool saying, 'Please disregard the comments above because these people are just sore losers.' "That's probably the toughest game I ever called, and probably the most controversial. But the fact I'm going to the World Cup tells me I made the right calls."

Officials with FIFA, the governing body of international soccer, even bent the rules to make sure they got Vergara back for another World Cup.

The 2002 World Cup was dogged by a series of questionable calls and the resulting furor prompted FIFA to overhaul the way officials are chosen.


THE new system required officials to work in crews consisting of one referee and two assistant referees for the four years preceding the World Cup to get them accustomed to working with one another. The best crews were to be selected for Germany's World Cup.

But the referee on Vergara's crew got injured and was unable to pass the fitness test. Vergara figured that was the end of his dream.

"The system is you all go or no one goes," he says. "So the fact they found another crew for me to work on tells me someone wants me to be there.''

A record five billion people watched the World Cup 2002 matches on television and observers predict more viewers this time. Conservative estimates peg the worldwide TV audience for next month's final to be in the neighbourhood of 300 million -- more than triple the 95 million that tuned in to watch this year's Super Bowl.

Vergara hopes to be in the thick of that final. He was one of the few officials who stayed out of trouble in 2002 and was rewarded by being selected as one of just a handful of officials returning to officiate this year's World Cup. Officials at the World Cup are graded by their superiors for their performance in each game and Vergara's assessments in 2002 were so good, he ended up working more games than any other official, including the third-place game.

He went on to officiate a semifinal of the Olympic soccer event in Athens in 2004.

This time, Vergara hopes his consistent work will get him to the big game.

"Everyone wants to referee the final. The first dream of every referee is to get to the World Cup. And once you get to the World Cup, it becomes, 'OK, can I get to the final?' "

He says what most Canadians cannot appreciate about soccer is the passionate atmosphere when seeing a game live.

"To have 20,000 people here at an arena for a hockey game is something. But to have 110,000 people in a stadium like Azteca in Mexico City, there's a hum.

"It sounds like a swarm of bees. That's exactly the sound you hear -- and it lasts the full 90 minutes.

"And you don't get that in any other sport -- baseball, hockey, basketball, football -- you don't get that sound. And that passion... it's a religion to them. It's a way of forgetting all their problems. They could be dirt poor, but they'll find a way to get a ticket, because that's the way they forget."

Vergara says it's hard not to be a fan at the World Cup, even when you're an official. "The games feel like about 15 minutes. You appreciate the players, the touches, the skill level and mostly the atmosphere."

But it's also a draining experience to have your work so closely scrutinized, with the stakes so high.

"I've never left the soccer field after an international match physically exhausted. Never ever. I could always go another hour. But I've always left the field mentally drained, and that's because of the concentration you have to have to stay focused on what's going on. That's the difficult part -- the concentration."

So what's it like to blow a call? Vergara says he realizes it immediately.

"You have a sense right away whether you are right or wrong. My experience has been if I make a call, I know right away whether I made a mistake or not. You just know."

But he says an official has to be unflinching. Several times over the years, he says he had to eject his brother, Yanko, from a match, and he's also lost friends over calls.

"I think I had integrity from Day 1. I wasn't one of these referees who could be persuaded, and I lost a lot of friends because of it. I come from a Chilean background. I lost many Chilean friends because I was a referee and I couldn't be swayed by the fact that I knew you.

"My own flesh and blood and I wouldn't tolerate anything from him, so why would I tolerate it from anyone else?"

While he's become a minor celebrity in the world of international soccer, Vergara remains a blue-collar referee at home in Winnipeg. Recently, Vergara was to officiate a high school game in Fort Garry only to discover the game had been cancelled because someone had forgotten to paint the lines on the field. Then there are players who seem unswayed by his international experience.

"I had a boy in a high school game complain to me about a call," Vergara says, "so I ended up cautioning him. He doesn't care I was at a World Cup. He's still going to complain."