Female football referee, Emanuela Rusta has revealed she is fed up of being referred to as ‘the s3xy ref’ after officiating in the Women’s Champions League.
Rusta, 30, hails from Albania, and became the first woman to referee a men’s Albanian SuperLiga match.
After that feat, she made the step up to the European stage in recent months and is the referee in tonight’s (September 19) Champions League women’s match between Sporting Lisbon and Real Madrid.
She has now shut down her Instagram account due to receiving s£xist messages on the platform as men constantly reference her bikini and gym photos.
Rusta has had to put up with headlines such as ‘The sexy referee who raises the temperature’ in her homeland, while another report in 2022 claimed she ‘stole the show’ in a Champions League match, despite being the fourth official.
Rusta says media coverage of her appearance has made it difficult for her to reach the same level as her male counterparts.
‘They should focus more on my professionalism than on other things,’ she told AFP, as quoted by Marca.
‘You have to fight hard to be accepted. You have to blow the glass ceiling to pieces’.
‘Refereeing is not a question of gender, but of competence,’
‘The (Albanian) Referees Association has always focused on promoting women, so my case is not a coincidence or the end of the process. I hope that the day is not far off when there are four women refereeing a match in the top men’s category.
‘Although it is apparently a predominantly male environment, I feel respected and appreciated for the work I do on the field.’
Rusta could follow in the footsteps of fellow female referee Stephanie Frappart, who became the first woman to officiate a men’s Champions League game when she took charge of Juventus’s clash with Dynamo Kyiv in 2020.
Frappart went on to make further history at the 2022 men’s World Cup when she refereed Germany’s group match with Costa Rica in Qatar.
