Europe's top referees and new international FIFA referees will travel to Mardan Palace, Antalya, Turkey on 30 January-2 February for the UEFA's annual winter referees' courses. In the context of winter course, 20th UEFA Advanced Course for Top Referees and 21st UEFA Introductory Course for International Referees will be held. Winter courses were previously held there in 2001.

UEFA organises two main referee courses a year: a summer meeting where match officials are prepared for the new season and given specific instructions for club and national-team duties, and a winter meeting designed to guide the referees into the second half of the season.

For the advanced course, UEFA has invited the 22 elite category referees and 17 elite development category referees, plus a small selection of first category referees. Seven Turkish FIFA referees have been invited. Along with Elite Category referee Cüneyt Çakır and Elite Development Category referee Fırat Aydinus, Hüseyin Göçek, Halis Özkahya, Tolga Özkalfa, Bülent Yıldırım, Yunus Yıldırım will join the course.

Among 56 referees 12 match officials chosen by the UEFA Referees Committee in December to take charge of games at UEFA EURO 2012 in Poland and Ukraine this summer, as well as others who will be present at the tournament as additional assistant referees and fourth officials. Jonas Eriksson (SWE), Viktor Kassai (HUN), Bjorn Kuipers (NED), Stéphane Lannoy (FRA), Pedro Proença (POR), Nicola Rizzoli (ITA), Damir Skomina (SVN), Wolfgang Stark (GER), Craig Thomson (SCO), Carlos Velasco Carballo (ESP), Howard Webb (ENG) will join to Cüneyt Çakır in Antalya.

Referees in the advanced group will have to pass an intermittent recovery fitness check, and will get instructions from the Referees Committee members concerning their assignments in the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League knockout stages, in particular with a view to achieving consistency and uniformity in decision-making.

The winter course in Antalya will be followed by the referees resuming their UEFA competition duties in mid-February. The EURO officials will then attend a workshop in Warsaw at the end of April and beginning of May.

21st UEFA Introductory Course for International Referees

FIFA's list of European international referees this year features 43 new names who are representing 28 European national associations, and the introductory course will be their first official experience of the international circuit.

Referees will have extensive medical check-up and take the FIFA fitness test. For the first time, they will have their visual abilities tested. With referees needing to maintain focus and concentration amid the high pace of a modern elite game, it is essential that they are able to fix their vision on incidents, to focus on close or moving objects and react to movement around them.

New FIFA referees will also receive various instructions from the UEFA administration on matters such as writing reports and how to conduct themselves as UEFA representatives at matches. With English the common UEFA refereeing language, members of the UEFA Referees Committee will interview the match officials to evaluate their working knowledge of English.

Furthermore, the introductory course will contain presentations by Referees Committee members and video sessions analysing specially prepared footage from UEFA games over the past year. Participants will also learn about specific training sessions, including exercises relevant to their movement during a match.

The UEFA Winter Referee Courses will be closed to the media. All the news about the courses can be followed from www.tff.org.