MELİS OZCIGDEM (2019)

Melis Özçiğdem's first acquaintance with football took place when her uncle gathered all the cousins to form a team and played matches with the children of the neighborhood. Later, when he wanted to be a football player, he got support from his family.

He started as a licensed football player in Altay's women's football team in 1995. He played football for 13 years. He took part in the national team for 7 years. In the last years of his football career, he started to act as a referee. He took part in the national referee team in the 3rd league for three seasons. He served as the 4th referee in the 2nd League, PTF 1st League and Turkey Cup matches. In April 2017, he took part as a referee in the UEFA European Under-17 Championship finals. The category jumped as he was not eliminated until the final match. He served as an additional assistant referee in the Super League for a while. She was the only woman among 41 male referees.  He has been a referee for 13 years and a FIFA Referee for 5 years. At the same time, she has been teaching Physical Education for 11 years. He has successful students in the team he formed at the school.

While the number of regional male referees is 260 in Turkey, the number of female referees is 20 and the number of assistant male referees is 473, the number of female assistant referees is 52. Currently, there are only three FIFA female referees in Turkey.

During a season, there are 4 running tests, the first of which is at the beginning of the season. When the running test is passed, a match can be played until the next running test. Apart from the trainings for the matches, there are also the preparations they make. Player analysis, team analysis (cards taken by the player, victory and loss of the team, how the same teams played against each other before, is there any enmity between them).

He states that male referees do not discriminate and support female referees.  He says that male football players think that they can easily mislead and influence the decisions about the match when they see the female referee. When they see the management in the first 5-10 minutes, the match returns to its normal course. He states that it is possible to take control of the player, especially by empathizing with the player who gets angry quickly, and this ensures that the match goes smoothly.

She is one of our successful female referees.