MARGAO
Maria Rebello has been appointed as a referee assessor for the preliminary competition AFC Round 1 of the Women's Olympic Football Tournament Paris 2024 to be played from April 11 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
The former footballer and referee from Goa is one of the two referee assessors at the tournament alongside China's Cui Yongmei.
For Maria, the appointment is another feather in her cap. After a successful football career, which began with her representing India as a player in 1998, Maria turned a referee and went on to officiate at the Asian Games in India in 2014 and was appointed referee assessor and instructor in 2018.
Maria is the second Goan woman to be part of the AFC Olympic qualifiers “ the first being Uvena Fernandes from Canacona, who has refereed FIFA World Cups in the past.
As a player, Maria captained the Indian women’s team in 2001 that participated in the AFC women’s championship in Chinese Taipei. Though they lost in the group stage and she retired soon after that, the desire to keep in touch with the sport made her enrol for a refereeing course. She did her training with the Bombay Referees Association (BRA) and then joined the Goa Football Association to ply her trade.
