AFLE REVEALS 80-STRONG OFFICIATING TEAM
The American Football League Europe has unveiled its own officiating department, which it claims consists of approximately 80 officials from across the continent.
Claiming that the move to create the department underlines the league’s ‘commitment to fairness, professionalism and high sporting standards’, the AFLE’s stated goal is to build a performance-driven and team-oriented officiating programme. Officials will be viewed as high-performance athletes who require professional structures, continuous development and strong support systems and, in order to achieve this, the league intends to work closely with leading organisations to establish modern training and development standards.
The department will be led by Malte Scholz, Damian Jurzyk and Michael Kattillus, with Scholz serving as the representative of approximately 80 of the highest-qualified officials currently active in the sport.
The AFLE insists that communication will plays a central role in the programme, with a shared understanding of rules, interpretations and expectations being essential to create consistency and ensure fair competition across the league. Therefore, the department will be an essential part of the league office and will work closely with teams to put the focus on the players and fairness within the game.
“Officials are a crucial part of football,” the AFLE statement concludes. “Their role goes far beyond enforcing the rules. They protect players, uphold the integrity of the sport and ensure that games are decided by performance on the field.
“The AFLE is committed to supporting its officials and creating an environment where they can perform at their best, just like the athletes they officiate.”
The announcement has echoes of a similar missive issued by the European Football Alliance last October, in which the then breakaway organisation claimed that it had taken ‘another major step towards the viability of becoming the continent’s premier professional football league in 2026’ by ‘securing the support of nearly every referee who officiated in last season’s European League of Football’.
At that point, the EFA suggested that around 100 of Europe’s most experienced officials would join the 11 teams that took the step to break away from the ELF, amid shared concerns over transparency, sustainability and the long-term growth of American football across Europe. Since then, however, a split within the EFA has led to the creation of the AFLE, while those teams remaining loyal to the Alliance have both rejoined and subsequently split from the ELF a second time. If the AFLE now has control over the vast majority of officials, it could be another blow to the EFA’s hopes of launching its own league, as it appears intent on doing since talks about a possible reunion with the AFLE failed to find common ground earlier this month.