EFFENDI

• His match in Amsterdam in 1928 wasn't an easy one according to Professor Yunan Labib Rizk who wrote on the Al Ahram site:
• It so happened that the Egyptian Olympic Committee sent referee Youssef Mohamed Effendi to take part in the tournament. To his misfortune, he had to referee the match between Germany and Uruguay, a match filled with tension. Worse, the German team, according to Al-Ahram, consisted of players noted not only for their huge bodies but also for "their expertise at causing injury." Because of the violence in the match, the Egyptian referee, in front of 30,000 mostly German spectators, threw out the core of the German defence during the first half and, in the second, also sent off a member of each side. His decisions won him little popularity. Perhaps the mildest criticism was that of the secretary-general of the International Football Federation who said that, in spite of his admiration for Mohamed, "he made a mistake this time by taking out the heart of the defence of an important team like that. His lack of knowledge of the languages spoken by the competing players complicated his task."