Ladies and Gentlemen ... Howard Webb

Howard Melton Webb, born 14-JUL-1971, hails from Rotherham, South Yorkshire England. Web has been a referee since 1993 and a FIFA referee since 2005. His FIFA bio is here, and Wikipedia page is here.

Webb will be joined by Darren Cann and Mike Mullarkey as his assistants for the final. No information at the time of this writing is available for the alternate referee, or alternate assistant referee.

Howard Webb's father was a referee and it was he who made his son aware of a referee's course. Howard passed the course when he was 19 years old and started refereeing locally. He became a referee in the Northern Counties East League in 1996. In the year 2000 he was included on the National List of Football League referees. By then he was only 29 years old. Three years later he was selected as a Premiership referee. In 2005 at the age of 34 he received his FIFA badge.

Webb will be the first Englishman sine 1974 to preside over a World Cup final where Jack Taylor was the last who refereed the Dutch loss to West Germany.

Webb is also the youngest at 38 to referee a World Cup final in 72 years, the last being Pierre Capdeville. 

During this time he has accumulated quite a record of matches as noted here by WorldReferee.com. Also of note is his discipline record statistics listed below:

Year	Games	Total	per game	Total	per game
2000–01	26	58	2.23	1	0.04
2001–02	32	69	2.16	5	0.16
2002–03	39	145	3.72	4	0.10
2003–04	34	92	2.94	9	0.26
2004–05	34	100	2.94	2	0.06
2005–06	47	117	2.49	7	0.15
2006–07	43	151	3.51	9	0.21
2007–08	38	128	3.37	2	0.05
2008–09	40	132	3.30	6	0.15
2009-10	35	124	3.54	4	0.11
Overall	368	1116	3.03	49	0.13

Webb's style is seemingly one of presence and communication, not strict discipline. This would seem to be emphasised in a recent BBC interview where Howard notes that, "being a good referee all comes down to the way you manage people and how you communicate with them".

NED v. ESP will be a significant test of that style as he leads us into the closing match of this quadrennial festival.