Thetownend.com

Please join me with wishing this fella the best of luck in his retirement.  He brought smiles and happiness to so many this summer and will never be forgotton.  We respect you, we love you and we'll miss you.

http://www.uefa.com/trainingground/news/Kind=512/newsId=268337.html

God Bless that man.

Careful JA, I fucking hate refs, and Meier is right up the top of the list.

 Collina, though, shows it is possible to do the job without being completely clueless,

 He retires from Italian football, at the end of the season, now that will be a loss.

I feel i must ditto Jan's point, a fantastic Ref he did he's job fantastically well, kept going even when he got sick death threats from silly english people crying about Sol Campbell or something, happy retirement.

A sad day indeed

For a long time I thought he was almost as good as Collina, but in his last couple of years he seemed to get a bit carried away with his own reputation.

He has done very well to rise from the general sub-mediocrity of Swiss refereeing though. The second best ref here is a woman.

i heard rumors he may come over to premiership for a season or two?

I read this a while back, as the retirement age is two years later in England compared to Italy.

 Not sure it would necessarily work, as the Prem is played at a greater pace.

 However it would be good to get Collina in to teach our lot how to do the job properly....and he could do some games  with the 72.

I agree with that and different interpretations on challanges from behind etc

he was a good ref. shame he got vilified for one decision (which i still think was correct but then wngland have to find a scapegoat when they go out) Another ref who i used to think was good but since proved me wrong was anders frisk (the porn star lookalike) seen him make some shocking decisions in the last year or two.

Bollocks to the bloke. Hope he gets a carpet burn!  :x

can't comment on past refereeing performances.... but i hate urs meier simple as. quite happy to see the back of him

i couldn't really give a shit to be honest. what's done is done and he can't make anymore of 'those' decisions now

Collina was forced to retire in Italy because he's now 45.
In England he could referee for a bit longer.

He's the ref for Chelsea vs Barca tonight

The idea of baldy coming to the Prem was seriously mooted a season or so back however the FA kicked it into touch as they are trying to bring more home grown refs through grass roots and thought it didn't look very good.

:shock: < its him