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International refereeing has many names on its list and, nowadays, Spanish referees keep arriving stronger than ever and fighting for a place in the officiating Olympus. However, for this to happen, others have been working for years to open the path for them based on hard work, perseverance and good decisions on the field. Without a doubt, one of these predecessors is Valencian referee Mateu Lahoz, a Spanish classic in Europe who will be in charge of the next Champions League match.

Before this big date in European football that awaits him this May 29th in Estadio do Dragão in Oporto, in Laboratorio Hypermedia we wanted to look at his extensive career. Without a doubt, in his long and professional curriculum we find more than enough reasons to justify his election as the referee to officiate the Champions League final.

We continue with #UnaSemanaUnaFederacion (One Week, One Federation), a Laboratorio Hipermedia campaign in which each month we talk during a whole week about the main projects of an Spanish local federation, also interviewing to a relevant person in the world of refereeing in the region.

The previous month we could talk with Marta Huerta de Aza, referee affiliated to the Referees’  Committee of Tenerife, and in May the leading role is Yolanda Parga, former national and international assistant referee and now Responsible of Female Refereeing in Madrid Referees’ Committee, among other posts. The Galician, although settled in Madrid 14 years ago, speak with our colleagues Lara Llanos and Carlos Chelle through video call.

At first sight, the term augmented reality may be conceived as innovative and new, but we can actually trace it back to the past century, even though it wasn’t known with the same name and the spotlight laid more on the milestone itself. The history of augmented reality points straight to one name: Tom Claudel, researcher, as the first one to introduce this concept through a gadget design to repair planes where an image with information (such as indications and cables) was displayed from a camera from the operator’s view. With this, conscience about this technology started to shape up as we know it today.

June 16, 2018. Roll the ball in the Kazan Arena. France faces Australia on the first day of their group in the 2018 World Cup. The Gauls arrive as one of the great favorites to win the trophy, while the Australians defend themselves as best they can against the French onslaught.

60th minute of the match. Griezmann falls in the area. The game stops. The referee goes to the VAR (Video Assistant Referee). After the review on the screen, he signals a penalty for France. The Atletico de Madrid player at the time scores. The match ends with a 2 to 1 in favor of ‘Les Bleus’. The play, in the end, goes down in history for being the first in football history where the technology known as VAR was used.

Almost six years under the critic magnifying glass of fans, players and media have made De Burgos Bengoetxea one of Spanish LaLiga’s steel referees. The Basque official is one of the most popular faces of Spanish’s refereeing, making himself a place in the First Division of the country and in international competitions based on hard work and effort. Besides, he has become with the appearance of VAR in one of the referees most linked to this new system. A cocktail of attributes that made him worthy of an important place in Spanish’s football panorama.

It is Sunday at noon in the Terezin ghetto. Everyone in the Dresden barracks is excited: from children to the elderly. The noise is palpable in the environment and comes from the patio. A beep accelerates the incessant tingling in the barracks. The beep is that of a whistle. The whistle is that of a referee. The match of the day has started in the Terezin ghetto League.

Between the Elba and Ohre rivers, just 60 kilometers from Prague, emerges imposing Terezin. Founded in the 18th century, its streets and its walled shape are witnesses of well-known episodes in contemporary history. With an area of ​​less than 15 km², it has played a leading role in the two world wars of the last century. In 1914, Gavrilo Princip was jailed there after perpetrating the well-known murder of Francisco Fernando, inherited from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his wife. Assassination that ultimately was the trigger for the World War I. During World War II (1939-45), Terezin was used by the Nazis as a passing ghetto for the Jews.

As fans of the sports that we are, we have often seen a record in some competition, either to reach a huge number of goals or to win a race in the shortest possible time. But within these challenges that we are used to see and that appear in the news there are outdated marks that have caught our attention, either because we do not know the data or because they are so rare that they may not be beaten again in a long time.

In LabHipermedia we also like challenges, although we leave the entry into the book Guinness of Records to the true protagonists of the sport. The last thing we set out to do was to create a virtual reality tool that will improve the training of the assistant referees, and that we believe we have fulfilled beyond expectatives with the launch of VAR3D, which you can order in this link.

As we commented in the previous chapters of this serial that traces the history of football through the evolution of its rules, the International Football Association Board (IFAB), an association in charge of preserving football’s rules, was born on June 2, 1886 in London. The goal of its creation was to unify the different, although similar in essence, football rules that the four British federations had drawn up. From this moment, and already ignoring the conflict that occurred between the federations regarding the issue of professionalism, the IFAB emerged as the only entity responsible for developing and preserving football’s rules.

1999. The scoreboard marks the 90th minute at the Camp Nou. The assistant picks up the number three on the light. Three minutes is the time that Bayern München has left to fly with the champions to Germany. Three minutes left for the red devils, with the famous Sir Alex Ferguson in the bench, to come back the 1-0 against. A suspenseful plot sprinkles the Camp Nou. Corner for Manchester. United goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel goes up to shoot. David Beckham’s right hand takes the corner. Several rebounds inside the area leave a dead ball in the small area. Teddy Sheringham takes advantage of it and sends the ball to the back of the net. 1-1 and the characteristic British «yes» floods the stands. A minute later, another corner kick from Beckham ends with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer scoring, after Sheringham’s extension.

The street and the videogames have often been considered enemies, especially now when it’s not necessary to pay for playing games, or even leave your house, as it happened with the amusement machines. The evolution of the gamer industry started bringing videogames home. This gives everyone, since the first videogame console, the possibility of playing whenever they want. However, some groups started to criticize young people for wasting time in front of the screen instead of doing some sport activities or socializing in the street. At this point, a debate has been fired about the health damages that this fact entails, being the obesity in childhood the main topic of discussion.

Later, the ones who plead for the physical activity could see the balance turned down in their favour with the new “active games” that came videogames that demand the movement on players and subsequently incorporate some level of phisicality, even being at home. With games for the XaviXPort (2004), Domyos (2009), or the iconic Wii Sports (2006) – at this moment, one of the best games of the revolutionary Nintendo’s gadget -, other accessories came such as the motion capture camera for Play Station, the upgraded Eye Toy (2003) or the Xbox 360’s kinnect. All these inventions included games about sport or dance and, with them, the result was the sweating of every kid at the end of the game.