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Louise Thomas

Editor

German referee Felix Zwayer will take charge of England’s Euro 2024 semi-final against the Netherlands on Wednesday, 10 July in Dortmund.

The experienced official, 43, has been refereeing since 2005, but was given a six-month ban from officiating by the German Football Federation in 2006 after accepting a €300 bribe to cover up for fellow official Robert Hoyzer.

Zwayer later brought Hoyzer’s match-fixing plot to light, and after his ban he rebuilt his own reputation and his career, despite Hoyzer being banned for life.

In 2021, Jude Bellingham was fined by the German Football Federation after he commented on Zwayer’s involvement in the scandal after Borussia Dortmund’s loss to Bayern Munich.

“You are giving a referee who has already fixed matches before the biggest game in Germany. What do you expect?”, said Bellingham at the time. He was later fined £34,000.

Zwayer has been a Fifa-listed referee since 2012, but this is the first major tournament he has refereed at, despite being part of the VAR team for the 2018 World Cup. He previously took charge of the 2023 Nations League final between Spain and Crotia.

When asked about the situation in an England press conference on Monday, Luke Shaw said: “We have to respect Uefa in whoever they decide to pick as the ref. That won’t change anything about us.

“We still just focus on the game in hand, not too much about what refs we’ve been given or this and that. For us, it won’t make any difference.”

Zwayer has taken charge of three games so far at Euro 2024. He was in the middle for Italy’s opener against Albania on matchday one, before taking charge of Portugal’s 3-0 win over Turkey on matchday two. He has already been in charge of one Netherlands match so far too – their 3-0 win against Romania in the round of 16.

See below for the officiating team in full for Netherlands vs England:

Referee: Felix Zwayer (GER)

Assistant Referees: Stefan Lupp ( GER) and Marco Achmüller (GER)

Video Assistant Referee: Bastian Dankert (GER)

Assistant VAR 1: Christian Dingert (GER)

Assistant VAR 2: Marco Fritz (GER)

Fourth official: Daniel Siebert (GER)

What TV channel is it on?

Netherlands vs England will kick off at 8pm BST in Dortmund, and it’ll be shown live on ITV 1 in the UK. Subscribers can stream the match via ITVX, with coverage starting at 6.30pm BST.

You can find a full list of which channel is showing each match here.

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