Overview
- The Football Association announced on Tuesday that Professional Game Match Officials Limited will rebrand as Pro-Ref and that Select Groups 1 and 2 plus the Supplementary List will merge into a single Professional Referees Group serving the Premier League and Championship.
- Ten former professional players have begun formal training to become Video Match Officials, a new pathway intended to add on-field experience to video reviews handled in the VAR control room.
- Howard Webb, the refereeing lead, said the reforms are designed to modernize structures, improve support for officials, and reward performance with backing from the FA, Premier League, EFL and WSL Football.
- Under the new model appointments will be more flexible across competitions and will weigh individual performance more heavily when selecting match officials for games.
- Implementation starts next season with monitoring and evaluation planned to assess whether ex-player VMOs and the unified appointments system improve decision quality and can be offered as a model to other leagues.