AUSTIN — Ismail Elfath didn’t follow the signs to Q2 Stadium on Saturday night. He didn’t need to.
He took a route he’s traveled hundreds, maybe thousands of times during the two decades he’s lived in Central Texas. From his house in Wells Branch, he didn’t even need to take the highway. Driving south on Metric Boulevard, past his old apartment, then right on Rutland Drive, to the intersection where he worked for nearly seven years as a project manager and IT consultant.
“I had a smile on my face driving, because I just left my own house, I'm driving my own car, and it's like a full circle of your life,” said Elfath, who was born in Morocco and moved to the United States to attend college at the University of Texas. “You're like, man, I went all over the world to do this and now it's 10 minutes away from my house. It really felt good.”
The final turn was one he wouldn’t have had reason to take before: right on McKalla Place.
“It used to be the yellow cap depot,” referring to the dead end where construction workers used to park on their way to various jobs. “That’s all that was there.”
Elfath, a longtime Austinite and receiver of the Austin Soccer Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019, was the center referee for the biggest moment in his city’s soccer history. He blew the whistle for kickoff of Austin FC vs. the San Jose Earthquakes on Saturday night in front of a sold-out crowd of 20,738 fans at Q2 — on the former chemical plant site referred to in city documents as 10414 McKalla Place.
Drove past the road sign for McKalla Place on the way in. This place hasn’t seen an explosion this big since 2003. pic.twitter.com/f8MmQATWFM
— Chris Bils (@ChrisBils) June 19, 2021
Some of his closest friends were in the crowd, but even they didn’t fully know what they were about to witness when they arrived to the stadium on match day. Elfath secured tickets for several of them, but didn’t say that he would be there also.
MLS referee assignments are handed out by the Professional Referee Organization 21 days in advance, Elfath kept this one quiet. In the referee’s locker room, his phone was silent before the match and buzzing as soon as he turned it back on afterward.
"I gave my close friends and family — my brothers and some of my referee mentors and some of my close friends — I gave them tickets,” he said. "But almost all of them did not know that I was actually going to be there refereeing until until about an hour or two before the game.”
Elfath didn’t always know he was going to be a referee. In fact, it was the furthest thing from his mind when he moved to the U.S. and joined the UT club team as a feisty center forward. He used to give the referees hell, to the point where, in 2004, he complained to the head of referees one Sunday about the calls his team had received.
“I come from a country where sports is played with passion,” he said during a 2019 interview with Austin’s Soccer Pod. “That’s probably true for most places, but particularly in North Africa, they play it with passion and I brought that to the Sunday league. I played like it was the final of the World Cup every time. … I was complaining about the referees, and he goes, ‘You’ve got to be one yourself or stop complaining.’”
In the heat of the moment, Elfath took him up on it. Almost immediately, he was hooked.
17 years later, he has established his reputation as one of the top referees in the Americas, and will be in Tokyo this summer for the Olympics with an eye on next year’s World Cup in Qatar. In 2019, he called the final of the men’s U-20 World Cup won by Ukraine over South Korea.
He said that Saturday’s match will live alongside some of the biggest he’s ever been part of, both for the personal significance and the spectacle of the first-ever Austin FC home match. A stadium opener is a rare occasion for most soccer players, referees and spectators, but not for Elfath.
“I've done a lot of stadium openers, so I knew what the atmosphere was going to be like,” he said. “I did the Cincinnati stadium opener, I was there for the Minnesota first-ever home game. I was there for the first-ever game of the 49ers’ (Levi’s) Stadium, which was a San Jose Earthquakes match, and I’ve been in other bigger games.
“And I knew that you need to allow yourself the moment so that you can actually recognize it, let it happen, let it go and then hit your trigger point, which is usually for me the coin toss. And then you kind of switch on to a different persona.
“Yeah, I was familiar with that routine. I knew what it was going to be like. What was special was after the game when you then get all the messages from the people. And then you see what it means to them to have a professional game in Austin. And then from the referee community, to have one of their own do it. It meant a lot to them.”
That context was missing for most of the audience, who gave their hometown judicator several hearty rounds of boos. A lack of figurative home cooking probably helps the case for Elfath getting more matches in town, where actual home-cooked meals are an option.
Ismail Elfath is the center ref tonight. So when you boo, you’re booing one of your own, Austin.
— Chris Bils (@ChrisBils) June 20, 2021
Those who did know who Elfath was might have been surprised that he got the assignment.
"I'd like to say that they said that, you know, hometown boy, (2020 MLS) Referee of the Year, no risk, we can give it to him and assign it,” he said. “Or it could have just been the rotation. I couldn’t tell you. It’s very common. We have a bunch of referees who live in the New York City-New Jersey area that always do New York City FC and New York Red Bulls. It’s the same in Salt Lake City, Seattle, Portland and Los Angeles. In big population hubs it’s inevitable that you’re going to have teams and referees in the same area.”
Elfath handed out three yellow cards, all in the first half. Two were to San Jose (Florian Jungwirth and Eric Remedi) and the other went to Austin FC winger Jared Stroud. The only controversy might have been his decision to keep a card in his pocket when Remedi, already on a yellow, went hard into Tomás Pochettino and drew a foul call in the 38th minute.
“Everything went well, and actually even the San Jose coach (Matias Almeyda) came to unusual, came into the locker room area, an unusual move, to compliment the group.”
If there was anything bittersweet about the night, it was that he didn’t get to share it with the people who matter most. His family is currently in Morocco on vacation for most of the summer while Elfath’s schedule heats up.
“I kept thinking about it: ‘Man, if the (family) could witness this, they would never forget it.’”
It’ll be at least August by the time Elfath gets another opportunity at Q2. He’ll be in New York on Wednesday for NYCFC vs. Atlanta United, before heading straight to Dallas to prepare for the Concacaf Gold Cup. After that, it’s off to Japan.
When he gets back, he’ll get to share his memories, along with the match ball and match notice that he kept from the night that he made history alongside the rest of the Austin soccer community.
