Abstract

The article examines the meaning of football referees’ “great careers” and aims to understand better how such exceptional journeys tend to end. Based on the authors’ interviews with over eighty of the world’s most famous referees, they analyzed the main characteristics of their outstanding careers, with a particular focus on the final phase. As a result, the authors identified factors that affect the closure of such a career either positively or negatively. This article is part of an extensive attempt to discover how the world’s elite referees are “manufactured.” To reach this goal, several stages of their careers have been investigated, with a particular focus on the final phase, just before retiring from a long and fruitful career.