César Arturo Ramos Stands Behind Katia Itzel García: 46 Days at the World Cup and a Defence That Needs No Scorecard

Mexico City International Airport, a morning after a long flight from Japan. César Arturo Ramos — one of the most internationally seasoned Mexican referees of his generation — stops at a TUDN microphone with his luggage still in hand. He is not asked about the trip. He is asked about Katia Itzel García, the female colleague under public criticism after a domestic league match in Mexico.

In Busan, I reopen that interview at 4:07 in the morning. At 61, I still pick up the phone at 4 a.m. — because Ulsan does not call to say goodnight, and stories like this never wait for office hours.

What kept me at the desk longer than necessary is not that a referee was criticised by a coach. That happens every week in every league on the planet. What is worth writing about is how a veteran referee chose to answer: not with a list of errors, not with a match report, but with the memory of 46 days spent together at a World Cup.

Context: when a coach questions a referee's level

Antonio Mohamed, head coach of Toluca, publicly questioned Katia Itzel García's performance in Toluca's match. He said she does not have the level required to officiate a match of that importance. The remarks came after the final whistle, in the familiar space of a press conference where competitive pressure is often converted into a rhetorical question about refereeing.

I have watched hundreds of those press conferences. In the K League, across Asian competitions, on long away trips. The pattern barely changes: a result that did not go as planned, a contentious incident, and one person made to carry the blame for a collective. Referees are the perfect candidate, because they cannot answer on the pitch, they have no highlights, no goals to defend themselves with.

One clarification matters here: this article does not conclude whether Mohamed was right or wrong, and there is no data to conclude either way. There is no match report, no VAR review, no incident summary. Only two opposing statements, and one person caught in the middle.

Katia Itzel García and the standard she is being measured against

García is not an unfamiliar name in officiating circles. She belongs to the group of referees called up to work at a World Cup — an event where each country's quota can be counted on one hand. A female referee passing FIFA and national federation screening is a multi-year process: fitness tests, scenario tests, camera evaluation, and closed training camps no journalist enters.

Ramos framed it in his own way. He recalled the two of them spending 46 days together at the World Cup, said she works hard, that he admires her, that she is a World Cup referee. He added that he will keep supporting her against the questions she may face.

To grasp the weight of that answer, you need to know who Ramos is inside the system. He sits among the Mexican referees with the deepest international experience, having officiated continental and world-level competitions, and he had just returned from Japan as part of his refereeing commitments. When someone like that speaks, it is not the voice of a lone colleague. It is the voice of a slice of authority within the corps.

The dawn over Ulsan never lies, and neither do people who have worked the trade for decades. You only defend someone with your professional reputation when you genuinely believe what you are saying.

What sits behind the defence: 46 days as a credential

In refereeing there is a kind of credibility that cannot be bought or manufactured. It comes from the minutes spent in the middle of pitches the whole world is watching, and from the days locked in training camps with colleagues from the same trade.

46 days at a World Cup means two people endured the same training grind, woke up early together, reviewed incident footage together, were reminded together about positioning and body language. Nothing else in football creates that kind of mutual understanding. The 90 minutes on the pitch is only the visible part. The submerged part is hundreds of hours of preparation nobody films.

When Ramos uses that number, he is saying something very specific to people inside the profession: I have seen her work at the highest level, in the harshest conditions, and I know how she prepares. That is the kind of argument I prefer to any passing statistics table.

Based on my experience following matches, a simple rule holds: when controversy erupts, people argue with feelings rather than data. xG has been overused in many places, but in refereeing even xG does not exist. No index measures a "correct decision" the way indexes measure goal chances. The only thing left to cross-check is professional credibility and an actual record.

A view from Busan: the refereeing system runs on trust, not contracts

I spent about eleven years hosting a football night programme and producing it, long enough to see the cracks at the bottom layer of this sport. Players have goals, transfer fees, billboard images. Coaches have results, contracts, buying and selling power. Referees have one thing: credibility. And that credibility is worn down every time it is publicly put in doubt.

In South Korea, where I work, the referee story always has two faces. Fans jeer, media analyse, but the federation handles matters through closed procedures and selective disclosure. What is protected is not the individual referee but the legitimacy of the appointment system.

Fans see a contract; I see the sleepless nights behind it. I wrote that line for the transfer market, but it holds here too. When a coach says a referee "does not have the level", he is not just judging a person. He is touching the legitimacy of an entire appointment system built by the federation.

On the rulebook side, the Mexican Football Federation and the league organisers have provisions on respecting and protecting match officials. Remarks that diminish a referee's level can fall into a zone subject to disciplinary review, depending on wording and on whether they read as technical criticism or as an implication of bias. In the data I have, no official investigation or sanction notice has appeared. That gap matters, and I will keep tracking it.

The contrarian angle: what the official storyline hides

Most bulletins will follow a tidy pattern: coach criticises, veteran referee defends, the discourse cools. That pattern is easy to tell, easy to read, and easy to skip past exactly where attention is needed most.

First blind spot: we are assessing a referee's professional level without a match report. Every debate about whether she officiated well is floating in the air. People quote feelings, not data. That makes neither side verifiable, and when neither side is verifiable, the one who loses is always the person with no stage to speak from.

Second blind spot: a coach's post-match remark is a pressure valve. It happens while emotions are hot, while the board waits for an explanation, while the players are watching the press room. Dissecting that remark as a serious technical statement overlooks that it is a product of pressure, not of analysis.

Third blind spot, and here I want to be direct without sounding like an attack: a female referee officiating a men's match is always scrutinised by a different yardstick. I have read thousands of forum comments after similar incidents, and the share of comments aimed at gender always runs higher than the technical issue deserves. Raising this is not about exempting anyone from judgment. It is about demanding that judgment use the same measure.

Son Heung-min was hammered in 2026, and I learned to look at people not through public opinion. Back then I did not write about his 11.2 kilometres to praise him, but to point out that the crowd was measuring a man with its own emotions. With García, what deserves measuring is the record, the 46 days, the training camps — not the peak of one evening.

What comes next

A three-minute phone call can change a whole summer, and one sentence in a press room can open three weeks of argument. The next dominoes sit in three places: whether the federation's disciplinary body opens a file, whether the referees' committee speaks publicly or stays silent, and whether García appears in Toluca's next appointment.

If the referees' committee stays silent, that is a message. If it speaks up to protect an individual, that is another. And if the next appointment still hands her a big match, then perhaps the best answer is not delivered on a forum, but at the opening whistle itself.