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Four-time IFFHS honoree Bibiana Steinhaus came out on top with 171 points in the rankings published on Monday, which were compiled by summing up the scores of the top twenty in each year’s rankings. The German whistle master was only 2 points ahead of Switzerland’s Esther Stäubli, who has never won the annual award, but has been included in the world’s top ten female soccer referees every year since 2012.
38-year-old Katalin Kulcsár finished fifth with 78 points.
Sándor Puhl, who died in 2021 at the age of sixty-five, came 11th overall in the IFFHS’s similar all-time ranking on March 8, which ranked male referees from 1987 to the present, having been voted the best in the world four times in a row between 1994 and 1997.