Urs Meier

Urs Meier: Caught in the crossfire – decisions under pressure.

Urs Meier, born in Zurich in 1959, is married and the father of two grown-up children and a younger daughter. For many years, he was one of the world’s leading referees. In 2004, he ended his career as a FIFA referee when he reached the age limit of 45 and has since been intensively involved in the systematic professionalization of international referees.

Urs Meier Lecture Topics

• You are the decision
• Between the fronts – decisions under pressure

Urs Meier – Former football expert at German TV ZDF

From 2005 to 2021, Urs Meier worked as a soccer pundit for ZDF, analyzing international matches as well as European and World Cups. Since the 2018/2019 season, he has also been commentating on all Champions League matches on Swiss private broadcaster Teleclub together with Marcel Reif. He is also a columnist for the weekly magazine FOCUS, where he provides a clear opinion on current decisions and developments in refereeing. He was awarded the German Television Prize together with Jürgen Klopp and Johannes B. Kerner for his appearances in the ZDF broadcasts during the 2006 World Cup.

Urs Meier: “I have learned to make decisions, to deal with defeats and wrong decisions. To work under pressure: When 60,000 spectators are against you, players are against you and then you have to make decisions within fractions of a second, that’s pressure.”

Urs Meier is a popular speaker at corporate events, conferences and congresses. He gives his listeners interesting insights into the world of the impartial. On the basis anecdotes and exciting play scenes it shows, which parallels there are between football and economics: The referee is the game director, leads the players as a collegial boss and has to make a lot of decisions under pressure. Fair play is the motto in both good and bad times.

Urs Meier presents current management issues from a different perspective in an entertaining and relaxed manner.

In doing so, he can draw on his own management experience, because for many years he ran his own very successful medium-sized company in the field of household appliances and kitchen construction. He sold the business in 2010.

Urs Meier: My life on the ball.

Urs Meier began his refereeing career in 1977, when he set himself the goal of refereeing the 1998 World Cup. In 1994, he took an important step in this direction when he was accepted into the circle of FIFA referees. That same year, he made his first international appearance in England’s U16 match against Ireland. Four years later, FIFA called him into the squad for the World Cup in France as planned. His outstanding performance during the tournament and especially in the politically explosive match USA vs. Iran made him internationally known.

Awards Urs Meier

• Second best referee in the world 2002
• German Television Award 2006
• 7 x Swiss referee of the year
• Golden Honorary Member of the Swiss Football Association

After the World Cup, Urs Meier refereed in the Champions League as well as the UEFA Cup, and also officiated at the European Championship in the Netherlands in 2000. Two years later, a panel of experts voted him the second best referee in the world. In December 2004 – after more than 880 games – he ended his refereeing career with the FC Basel versus FC Thun match.

Urs Meier is regarded as a brilliant speaker and crystal-clear analyst. The Süddeutsche Zeitung has described him as a “gifted speaker with wit and self-irony” who skilfully transfers his messages “from the green soccer pitch to real life.”

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