Female referees have been selected to officiate at a men’s World Cup finals for the first time. Stephanie Frappart of France, Salima Mukansanga from Rwanda and Yoshimi Yamashita from Japan have been included on FIFA’s official list of 36 referees for the tournament in Qatar later this year. Three women are also on the list of 69 assistant referees published on Thursday – Neuza Back from Brazil, Karen Diaz Medina from Mexico and Kathryn Nesbitt from the United States. “This concludes a long process that began several years ago with the deployment of female referees at Fifa men’s junior and senior tournaments,” the chairman of FIFA’s referees’ committee Pierluigi Collina said. Wyndham to investigate after its Qatar Fifa World Cup hotel bans gay guests “In this way, we clearly emphasise that it is quality that counts for us and not gender. I would hope that in the future, the selection of elite women’s match officials for important men’s competitions will be perceived as something normal and no longer as sensational. “They deserve to be at the Fifa World Cup because they constantly perform at a really high level, and that’s the important factor for us.” “As always, the criteria we have used is ‘quality first’ and the selected match officials represent the highest level of refereeing worldwide,” Collina, said on FIFA’s website. “The 2018 World Cup was very successful, partly because of the high standard of refereeing, and we will do our best to be even better in a few months in Qatar.” Frappart has refereed in the men’s Champions League and the 2019 European Super Cup match between Liverpool and Chelsea. Yamashita officiated at the 2019 Women’s World Cup, and at last year’s Tokyo Olympics. Last year, she became the first woman to officiate men’s pro games in Japan’s J-League, and this year the first to be handed the whistle at Asian Champions League games. Discussions are understood to still be ongoing over the use of semi-automated offside technology at the finals. The technology was tested at the Club World Cup earlier this year and the Arab Cup last year. Fifa has named 24 video assistant referees (VARs) for the finals. Additional reporting Kyodo