“Make decisions that are both thoughtful and quick”: the best National referee is also… mayor in Calvados

Norman Benjamin Lepaysant refereed his last official match this weekend after a 20-year career. A particularly moving moment since he was at the same time elected best referee of the year in National, the equivalent of the third division.

And his career is all the more atypical as this recognized referee is also, since last March… mayor of his town, Biéville-Beuville, a few kilometers from Caen (Calvados).

After starting out as a player at the age of 6, he seriously injured his knee at just 17 years old. Never mind, the young man then decides to go into arbitration. In 2006, just as he was beginning his career in the civil service, he passed the compulsory arbitration exam, before quickly moving through the stages, from the district level to the federal level!

“I still see myself starting my first match at this level. It was in Concarneau, in the CFA, the equivalent of the fourth division…” he confides. And the climb doesn’t stop there. From 2016 to 2018, Benjamin Lepaysant moved up another level to referee, this time in the National for two seasons. And in January 2018, he refereed his first Ligue 1 match, a big poster of the time, Guingamp-Lyon.

He brings Messi onto the pitch for his first match in France

“It was then the beginning of an extraordinary adventure at a very high level,” he says, moved. For six years, Benjamin Lepaysant then reached the Holy Grail by becoming a central referee in Ligue 2 and a substitute in Ligue 1.

This is how, on August 29, 2021, then replacing in Ligue 1, during the Reims-PSG match, Benjamin Lepaysant brought onto the field, for his first match in France, a certain Lionel Messi just recruited by the Parisian club, at the same time refereeing Mbappé or even Neymar. “These are memories that inevitably mark a football fan like me,” he assures. Just like last weekend. Because I had the chance to kick off my last match with my two daughters by my side. It is an absolutely indescribable moment and forever engraved in my memory and that of those close to me. »

But finally, a page turns because other perspectives await. The young retiree from arbitration will now devote himself to his family, to his job as a sustainable development technician at the Ministry of the Environment and… to the town of Biéville-Beuville and its 4,000 inhabitants, since he is now its mayor. “I already find a lot of similarities with arbitration,” he concludes. Here too you have to make decisions that are both thoughtful and quick, without going in all directions so as not to run out of steam too quickly! »