Vincic to take charge of WC final

The final of the FIFA World Cup 2026™ is just around the corner. After 102 matches involving 48 teams across 16 different venues, there are two sides left standing in pursuit of the trophy, Spain and Argentina.

After the identity of the two final teams was confirmed by Tuesday and Wednesday’s semi-finals, that of the referee followed on Thursday with FIFA announcing the appointment of Slovenia’s Slavko Vincic.

The 46-year-old from Maribor has refereed 512 matches in his career including five on the world stage, starting with two at Qatar 2022 – the Argentina-Saudi Arabia and Wales-England group fixtures.

Here in North America he has refereed three more, beginning with the Brazil-Morocco and Jordan-Algeria group games and continuing with the Mexico-Ecuador encounter in the Round of 16.

While Vincic’s only previous experience of refereeing Argentina was La Albiceleste’s aforementioned 2-1 defeat against Saudi Arabia , he has overseen five Spain matches starting with a friendly against Colombia (2-2) in 2017. He then officiated their UEFA EURO 2020 group fixture against Sweden (0-0), the UEFA Nations League semi-final against Italy (2-1) in 2023, and EURO 2024 matches against Italy (1-0) and France (2-1) – in the group stage and semi-finals respectively.