{"id":702035,"date":"2026-06-13T17:04:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T17:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/702035\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T17:04:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T17:04:10","slug":"world-cup-2026-injured-referee-michael-oliver-to-miss-ivory-coast-v-ecuador","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/702035\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup 2026: Injured referee Michael Oliver to miss Ivory Coast v Ecuador"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">English referee Michael Oliver has been ruled out of his first match at the 2026 World Cup because of injury.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 41-year-old, who was due to officiate the Group E meeting between Ivory Coast and Ecuador in Philadelphia on Sunday (00:00 BST, Monday), has been replaced by Frenchman Francois Letexier.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Fifa said Oliver is expected to be available for selection &#8220;in the coming days&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Oliver is one of six English on-field officials at the World Cup, with Anthony Taylor also among the 52 referees.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Gary Beswick, Adam Nunn, Stuart Burt and James Mainwaring were selected as assistant referees.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Oliver has stood in the Premier League since 2010 and was promoted to Uefa&#8217;s elite list of referees in 2018.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He officiated at the 2022 World Cup, including the quarter-final between Croatia and Brazil, and Euro 2024.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">There are 52 referees, 88 assistant referees and 30 video match officials involved in the World Cup in the US, Canada and Mexico.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"English referee Michael Oliver has been ruled out of his first match at the 2026 World Cup because&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":702036,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-702035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=702035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/702036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=702035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=702035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=702035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}