MADRID, 2 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) –

Extremaduran referee Marta Frías will say goodbye to arbitration this Saturday after directing the match between Athletic Club and UDG Tenerife in the 2022-2023 Finetwork League, a stage that she closes gratefully and that has given her “everything”.

Frías, attached to the Aragonese College, will put an end to a career of more than two decades, which makes her one of the pioneers of women’s refereeing in Spain. On January 22, she was in charge of refereeing the final of the Spanish Super Cup between FC Barcelona and Real Sociedad.

“I imagine that it is true that life is a sum of stages, and that each stage lasts its time, that to mature is to embrace them all. That to love oneself is to admit that the fall does not prevent a new rise and that whoever does not resist saying goodbye when correspond, win. And today I have won: friends, trips, experiences, tears, smiles, people who at some point, without further ado, change your life,” Frías said in a letter published by the RFEF.

The woman from Cáceres recalled that she is “a person who thinks that it is as important to endure as it is to know when it is time to leave.” “Perhaps life is not only trains to get on, but also stations to get off. And I get off here, at the Gracias station,” she said.

In this sense, the referee thanked the RFEF and its president Luis Rubiales “for all the involvement and affection that he has always had with the refereeing group and in an extraordinary way with the referees”, the Technical Committee of Referees and its president, Luis Medina Cantalejo, to the Royal Aragonese Football Federation (RFAF); to the Committee of Referees of Aragon, and to his colleagues and colleagues from the arbitration establishment.

“Thanks to all the people who have been necessary for me to continue growing, in one way or another. It is not necessary to name them, they know that behind every smile is mine. Thanks to my family for always believing in me, for showing me all their unconditional support during all these years. Without them it would not have been possible”, he added.

“But, above all, thanks to refereeing, for allowing me to feel so many emotions, for giving me so many moments of happiness, for having fallen in love in such a different way. He has given me everything and I hope I can return a little of that love to him. I’m leaving happy and proud to see the evolution that women’s refereeing has had since I started, who would have told me?”, he assured.

Finally, she closed her dismissal letter by encouraging “the new generations to try picking up a whistle, to sign up to be a referee, to let it become one of their passions.” “It has been a privilege and an honor to have been a referee,” she said.