Referee’s path to World Cup began in Austin.
Austin resident Ismail Elfath referees the inaugural MLS match at Q2 Stadium between Austin FC and the San Jose Earthquakes on June 19, 2021Town and Country Sports
in North Austin and a World Cup-bound career was born. It would belong not to any of the rambunctious second-graders scurrying around the half-sized pitch that day, but to the nearly broke UT student attempting to keep them in order."At first, it was good cash, right?" Elfath recalled."Like, why am I doing this, going in the sun doing eight to 10 games a day? It was a good chunk of change.
Seventeen years later, Elfath has turned his college side-hustle into a thriving career as one of North America'sand routinely taking high-profile international assignments as a member of FIFA's panel of elite match officials.
"I was a hotheaded player," Elfath said."I always complained to the guy that ran the league, and then one day he was like, 'Man, you always complain, you should just become a referee.'" Elfath accepted the challenge, attended a refereeing clinic, then began noticing that many of the job's demands came naturally to him as a lifelong player.
In 2018, with international opportunities flowing in, Elfath quit his sales position and committed 100% of his time to refereeing. It came with a pay cut, but brought the possibility of Qatar 2022 in play. He dedicated himself to a comprehensive physical and psychological fitness regimen and earned high-profile assignments at the 2019 FIFA