On June 30, a squad of 23 men will be crowned champions of Europe. But, a few days earlier, when Uefa announces the match official chosen to take charge of the final, another champion will be crowned. For as much as there is one competition between nations, there is another parallel tournament taking place among referees, one that is no less competitive, but that is fraught with politics and image.

Over the past two weeks, I have had the chance to speak at length with two former international-calibre referees. Both illustrated just how competitive and intense match officials can be, particularly since referees turned professional. They dissect each other’s performances and spend plenty of time speculating on who will be getting the top prize.

Uefa ranks referees – in the same manner that the alphabet soup of boxing federations ranks boxers – and, just like the WBC or IBF, these rankings are, largely, subjective. Match officials are continually assessed and evaluated and the referees’ committee assigns matches accordingly.

The rankings differ somewhat from boxing or tennis in the sense that they are not “ladders” as much as they are “tiers”. Referees guess which tiers they are in based on the matches they are assigned. For example, Italy v France in the group stage was considered a difficult game given the calibre of the two nations, their enduring rivalry and recent controversy, which is why it went to Lubos Michel, of Slovakia. Michel is the man who took charge of the Champions League final and, with Herbert Fandel, of Germany, and Manuel Mejuto González, of Spain, is thought to be in the highest tier of Uefa’s referees.

Howard Webb, on the other hand, is not held in quite such high regard, which is why he took charge of a relatively easy game, Austria v Poland. Of course, Webb had a torrid time in that match, which is probably why he was one of the four referees who were sent home after the group stage, with Konrad Plautz, of Austria, Tom Henning Ovrebo, of Norway, and Pieter Vink, of the Netherlands. Each of the three, like Webb, paid a price for what Uefa’s refereeing committee evidently saw as technical errors.

Plautz denied Portugal an obvious penalty against Switzerland and disallowed a seemingly legitimate goal in the same game. Ovrebo disallowed Luca Toni’s goal in the Italy v Romania game, before he gave what Uefa considered a “soft penalty” to the Romanians. As for Vink, he failed to give a penalty when Johan Elmander brought down David Silva in the Sweden v Spain game and then seemed reluctant to use his cards when the Austria v Croatia match reached boiling point.

Rightly or wrongly, Uefa believed that these four men should be eliminated after the group stage, which left eight referees for the remaining seven matches. And this is where things get rather tricky, where a referee finds himself in a career v country bind.

Take Fandel, for example. He probably believed that he had a legitimate shot at being awarded the final. But because Germany knocked out Portu-gal to advance to the semi-finals, he is going home. Uefa’s policy is that if an official’s country reaches the last four of the competition, that referee can no longer officiate. The same applies to Mejuto González and Roberto Rosetti, of Italy, who probably watched last night’s quarter-final penalty shoot-out with an eye as to how it might benefit them.

Normally, by this point, Uefa would have a shortlist of candidates for the final and semi-finals and would test them out in the quarter-finals. With Fandel and Mejuto González departing the tournament, it would leave Michel and Mejuto González as the leading candidates. Expect one of them to get the final, the other to get one semi-final and either Massimo Busacca, of Switzerland, or Frank de Bleeckere, of Belgium, to get the other. See? As a contest, it is as riveting as the real thing. Sort of.

Speaking of referees, for the past three years Uefa has had its own referees’ psychologist. Mattia Piffaretti, a Swiss former basketball player, is the man the officials turn to when they need to open their hearts (and minds). The polyglot Piffaretti says that some “80 to 90 per cent” of the officials (including assistants) at this tournament have been to see him for help, ranging from a friendly chat to a full-blown session. In this age of self-help and introspection, why should referees be any different?