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Tiraspol's Sheriff stadium is known as the most modern and best equipped in this part of Europe

TIRASPOL (Tiraspol Times) - Professional FIFA soccer referee Peter Zippel will preside over many of this season's games at the Tiraspol stadium. His first match took place Sunday where FC Sheriff Tiraspol played FC Zimbru Chişinău, and he has been contracted for the next 14 matches.

Peter Zippel, 46, was selected from the FIFA panel of referees and he is the first foreign referee to preside a season in Pridnestrovie, also known internationally as Transnistria or Transdniester.

The German referee has presided over soccer games in Germany since 1996 and been a referee for the Bundesliga since the year 2000. In 2003 he became a FIFA referee. He has 68 Bundesliga games under his belt, as well as 7 European Cups (official name: The UEFA Champions League).

Assistant referees are Peter Khenes and Torsten Shifner. Peter Gagelman is the fourth official, says FC Sheriff's press secretary, Miroslav Primovich.

FC Sheriff Tiraspol was founded in 1997. It is a truly international team, sporting professional players from three different continents: Europe, Africa and South America. As of September of this year, two Brazilian soccer players are on contract; striker Leandro Farias and defender Fernando Pereira Walles. The team also has eight African contract players from three different countries, Benin, Togo and Burkina Faso. All live fulltime in Tiraspol, PMR. The rest of the players are either local or come from nearby countries such as Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, Romania and Belarus.

Luxurious stadium

The home court of FC Sheriff is the Sheriff Stadium, located in Tiraspol, the capital of PMR. It is owned by the local Sheriff corporation, the second largest company in the country. It seats 14,300 spectators. It is the only football stadium in the region which is eligible for international events.

It occupies a territory of more than forty hectares and consists of the main field plus five other fields, training fields, a covered in-door arena for winter use as well as a soccer school for children and on-site residences for the players of FC Sheriff. A five star luxury hotel is under construction.

The newly built stadium and sport complex, constructed at an estimated cost of $200 million, has impressed its visitors, among them FIFA president Sepp Blatter and Willie McDougall from the Scottish Football Association who was interviewed by BBC television and stated that "I wish we had something like this in Scotland."

The owner of the stadium, Sheriff Ltd, also owns a chain of gas stations, a chain of supermarkets, a TV channel, a publishing house, a construction company, a Mercedes-Benz dealer, an advertising agency, the Kvint brandy factory, two bread factories, a mobile phone network, and the football club FC Sheriff Tiraspol. Despite accusations to the contrary, the company is not owned by the family of president Igor Smirnov. Such claims have consistently been denied by Igor Smirnov as well as his son Vladimir Smirnov, and Moldpres - the state news agency of Moldova - points to political and economic strife between Sheriff's owners and the government of Pridnestrovie, headed by Smirnov. (With information from Wikipedia)