It’s over for football referee Bartolomeu Varela. Voted best Ligue 2 whistle in 2021, the 49-year-old native of Dunkirk, who had also previously led 133 Ligue 1 matches from 2010 to 2017, was deregistered by the French Football Federation (FFF) in a case of false supporting documents travel according to information from the Foot Amateur website.
On the minutes of the meeting of October 27, there is question of a certain “MV”, with the simple initial of the family name of the arbitrator. For three years, Varela produced 21 Air France electronic tickets between Brest and Paris, where he was summoned by the Technical Arbitration Department, in order to include them in his expense reports. But the arbitrator only took the plane once and was reimbursed for the other 20 journeys – made by car – by the airline.
On January 11, Bartolomeu Varela was heard by the FFF’s higher appeal commission to explain his actions. He assured to be honest and that “these administrative irregularities had not been profitable to him”, while showing himself “painful to end his career like this”.