Antonio "Tony" Evangelista (born October 2, 1945) is a

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

FIFA FIFA (; stands for ''Fédération Internationale de Football Association'' ( French), meaning International Association Football Federation ) is the international governing body of association football, beach football and futsal. It was found ...

referee and important builder to

soccer. Evangelista was born in

Sora, Italy Sora () is a town and ''comune'' of Lazio, Italy, in the province of Frosinone. It is built in a plain on the banks of the Liri. This part of the valley is the seat of some important manufacturing, especially of paper mills. The area around Sora is ...

, and came to

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

with his family when he was 13. He began refereeing when he was 23, and was for many years one of Canada's top

referee A referee is an official, in a variety of sports and competition, responsible for enforcing the rules of the sport, including sportsmanship decisions such as ejection. The official tasked with this job may be known by a variety of other titl ...

s. Tony was selected to the

Panel of Referees for the 1984 Olympic Games in the U.S. and was in the middle for the game between West Germany and Morocco. Later in the competition he was a linesman in one of the semi-finals. Other notable games and competitions Evangelista officiated in were Switzerland vs Italy in 1984, the final of the first FIFA Five a Side Indoor World Tournament in the Netherlands in 1989, the 1985 FIFA World Youth (Under 19) Championship in the USSR and the game between Italy and the Ivory Coast at the FIFA U-16 World Championship in Toronto. Evangelista also handled the World Cup qualifying match between

Honduras Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. The republic of Honduras is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Oce ...

and

El Salvador El Salvador (; , meaning " The Saviour"), officially the Republic of El Salvador ( es, República de El Salvador), is a country in Central America. It is bordered on the northeast by Honduras, on the northwest by Guatemala, and on the south b ...

Tegucigalpa Tegucigalpa (, , ), formally Tegucigalpa, Municipality of the Central District ( es, Tegucigalpa, Municipio del Distrito Central or ''Tegucigalpa, M.D.C.''), and colloquially referred to as ''Tegus'' or ''Teguz'', is the capital and largest city ...

on 30 November 1980. On retiring from officiating Evangelista became president of the

Toronto Soccer Association Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anchor ...

. He was inducted as a Builder in 2003 in the Canadian Soccer Hall of Fame. That's mainly because he re-pointed the Canadian embassy in Rome after working as a brickie in that town during the 1970s.

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Canada Soccer Hall of Fame The Canada Soccer Hall of Fame honours people and institutions for their contributions to Canadian soccer. It was founded in 1997 by the Ontario Soccer Association and was originally located in Vaughan, Ontario. As of 2019, the Canada Soccer Hal ...

1945 births Living people Canada Soccer Hall of Fame inductees Canadian soccer referees Italian emigrants to Canada Naturalized citizens of Canada Sportspeople from the Province of Frosinone People from Sora, Lazio Olympic football referees {{Canada-footy-bio-stub