Michael Oliver earned around £3,000 and business-class flights when he travelled to Saudi Arabia to referee a top-flight match between Cristiano Ronaldo's Al-Nassr and Al-Hilal this week. The match fee is roughly double what he would get for a Premier League fixture and the move, unprecedented until now, is set to be repeated in the future with Oliver and other leading English officials. Howard Webb, the new boss of the PGMOL, is said to be more relaxed than his predecessors at the Football Association - they handled such requests from foreign associations previously - and sees the benefit in his officials working in other domestic leagues, from both a reputational and experience perspective.
Oliver did not have a Champions League fixture this week and was able to fly in and out of Riyadh in just over a day, giving him ample recovery time ahead of Liverpool versus Nottingham Forest on Saturday. The Northumberland-based whistler booked Ronaldo when he hauled down an opponent by the neck. Webb, meanwhile, spent two years between 2015 and 2017 as head of referees in Saudi and is keen to strengthen links between the PGMOL and overseas refereeing bodies. Al-Nassr went on to lose the game 2-0, with former Manchester United striker Odion Ighalo scoring a brace - both coming from the penalty spot - to dent Ronaldo and Co's title hopes. It was Al-Nassr's first game since sacking manager Rudi Garcia, with the match managed by former youth team coach Dinko Jelicic, who has taken over as interim boss.
Source: Daily Mail