Portuguese ref for Well v Hearts

Hearts v Well
By grabar
November 26 2010

Portuguese ref João Ferreira will take charge of the Motherwell v Hearts game on Sunday. 

He is part of a team of four coming over from Portugal and he will be the fourth official at the Hibs v St. Johnstone game on Saturday.

Ben Shave, who runs the Portuguese football blog cahiers du sport,told Stv.tv, “The style of refereeing in Portugal is quite different to what we see in the UK. The officials are far less inclined to let physical or borderline challenges go, and the number of cards per game is often higher as a result.

“This is obviously a by-product of the footballing culture over there, so it'll be interesting to see how they adapt to the Scottish game."

Not necessarily good news for a highly charged Motherwell v Hearts game. It will be interesting to see how things go on Sunday.

Joao Ferreira, 43, is an officer in the Portuguese Army Police by day. This season he has taken charge of four Liga Sagres games, three second tier games and one League Cup game. In that time, he has issued 30 yellow and two red cards.