Barca-Milan: Martin Atkinson is the referee

The game at the Nou Camp tomorrow evening between Barcelona-Milan will be refereed by Martin Atkinson. 

The English referee will be flanked by Michael Mullarkey and Peter Kirkup as his assistants. The fourth official will be Michael Jones. Atkinson has never previously refereed a game with either Barcelona or Milan. 

Martin Atkinson (born 31 March 1971) is an English professional football referee who officiates primarily in the Premier League and for FIFA. He was born in Bradford, West Yorkshire, but is now based in nearby Leeds.

Atkinson's highest domestic honour came on 14 May 2011, when he refereed the 2011 FA Cup Final at Wembley Stadium. He issued two yellow cards in the match, in which Manchester City defeated Stoke City 1-0.


Criticisms about Martin Atkinson:

After the 2009 Manchester derby at Old Trafford, Atkinson was criticised by Manchester City's then-manager Mark Hughes for bad time-keeping after Manchester United had scored an injury-time winner. The fourth official had signalled four minutes of additional time, but Michael Owen scored a 96th-minute goal, handing United a dramatic 4-3 win.

In September 2010, Atkinson was handed a one-week demotion to the role of fourth official after a time-keeping dispute with Everton manager David Moyes. Everton had scored two injury-time goals to make the score 3-3 against Manchester United, but Atkinson then blew his final whistle while Everton were midway through an attack with a chance of a winner.

In April 2010, Birmingham City central defender Roger Johnson censured Atkinson after the official awarded rivals Aston Villa a late penalty in the Second City derby, for an apparent foul by Johnson on Villa's Gabriel Agbonlahor. Television replays appeared to show Johnson had played the ball, and manager Alex McLeish also criticised the decision which gave Villa a 1-0 home win.

Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson censured Atkinson in March 2011 following his refereeing of United's away fixture with Chelsea. He called Chelsea's 80th-minute penalty award "very soft"; Frank Lampard converted the spot-kick to secure a 2-1 win for the hosts. Ferguson also felt that Atkinson should have issued a second yellow card to Chelsea defender David Luiz earlier in the second-half for an apparent trip on Wayne Rooney. It was not the first time Atkinson came under scrutiny after officiating this fixture; in the previous season Ferguson criticised him for awarding Chelsea a free-kick, from which captain John Terry scored the only goal of the game.

Source: acmilan.com;wikipedia.org 

Photo by:Ronnie Macdonald (Stoke City FC V Arsenal 64 Uploaded by EchetusXe) [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

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