Clayton Pisani

The Malta FA Refereeing Department yesterday announced that Clayton Pisani had been ap-pointed by UEFA to control the Euro 2016 Group D match between Gibraltar and Germany at the Estadio Algarve, Portugal, on Saturday.

Pisani will go down as the first Maltese referee in history to officiate a competitive match involving the current world champions as Germany should meet no problems to stave off the weak challenge of Gibraltar in their bid to regain the upperhand in a tight Group D.

Poland are leading the standings with 11 points from five matches followed by Scotland and Germany on ten.

Ireland are fourth with eight points. Gibraltar lost all five qualifiers so far, conceding 27 goals in the process.

The Gibraltar-Germany qualifier will also mark the first time that all six match officials will be from the Malta FA.

The assistant referees assigned by UEFA will be Mitchell Scerri and Duncan Sultana and the additional refs Marco Borg and Adrian Azzopardi.

The fourth official on duty will be Roberto Vella.

UEFA has appointed Fritz Stuchlik (Austria) to assess the performance of referee Pisani and his team on Saturday.

Meanwhile, earlier this week it was confirmed that the Malta Football Referees Association will be led by a new president for the coming term after members elected Alexei Tabone with a strong vote.

In elections for a new committee, Tabone won 83 per cent of the ballot as he got 66 votes to oust former president Lorry Sammut who only got 14 votes.

Sammut had been president for the past 11 years.

There will be new faces in the committee elected with Pawlu Caruana appointed vice-president and David Castillo the secretary general.

Thomas Debono is the treasurer and the other members elected were Ishmael Barbara, Christopher Francalanza, Alan Mario Sant, Malcolm Spiteri and Duncan Sultana.