German referee Felix Brych will be the Malta FA’s special guest at the annual winter seminar for match officials and referee observers, being held today and tomorrow at the Centenary Hall, the association’s refereeing department has announced.

Brych, who is also a qualified sports lawyer, has earned a reputation as one of the leading referees in world football.

Besides officiating at the London Olympic Games in 2012 and the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, Brych, 40, was also in charge of the first leg of the 2012 Champions League semi-final between Chelsea and Barcelona and the Europa League final between Sevilla and Benfica in 2014.

On the back of his good performances, Brych has been selected in the pool of referees for this year’s European Championship, to be held in France.

Brych’s presentation at the seminar, entitled ‘Modern football refereeing’, will focus on trends in modern football in terms of preparation, fitness, positioning and understanding of football.

The two-day seminar programme includes a series of informative presentations.

‘Towards achieving excellent performances’ is the title of the presentation to be delivered by MFA director of refereeing Adrian Casha, Ronald Zammit, the referees’ fitness coach, will deal with ‘Fatigue management for optimising physical performance’ while football nutrition specialist Dorianne Caruana Bonnici will focus on the nutritional aspect.

Seminar participants will also be addressed by Sliema Wanderers coach Stephen Azzopardi whose presentation is entitled ‘The referee’s management of the game – A coach’s perspective’.

The theme of the two-day seminar is ‘The 3Ps – Plan, Prepare, Perform’.