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July 11, Saturday, SV Terwolde training ground.
July 11, Saturday, SV Terwolde training ground.
Go Ahead Eagles faced Cyprus's Apollon Limassol in a preseason friendly that didn't even have a broadcast signal. There were probably more people on the substitutes' bench than living souls in the stands. The home team lost 0-3 without a fight, but no one cared about the score of such a warm-up match.
Rob Dieperink blew the final whistle and stuffed the yellow and red cards back into his pocket.
It was the last match he would ever officiate in his life. Two days later, on July 13, police found his body at his home in Borculo. He was only 38 years old.
Rewind 95 days.
April 9, Selhurst Park, London. Crystal Palace had swept Fiorentina 3-0 in the first leg of the Conference League quarterfinal. Dieperink sat in the VAR room, staring at the screen. Right after the match ended, the Metropolitan Police arrested him in his hotel room.
Three charges: attempting to engage in sexual communication with a 17-year-old and possessing related indecent images.
At the time, he was a regular on the FIFA list and had just been selected for the VAR referee team for the 2026 World Cup in the USA, Canada, and Mexico. He was a referee who had clawed his way up from a small town in the eastern Netherlands, spending over a decade just to get this ticket.
By May, the Metropolitan Police closed the case: the evidence did not meet the threshold for prosecution. All three charges were dropped, and no further action was taken.
The Royal Dutch Football Association (KNVB) reacted swiftly, immediately reinstating Dieperink's domestic officiating license. A spokesperson told the microphone that Rob was a respected referee and, above all, a good colleague.
On the books of the law and his home country's football association, he was innocent.
But FIFA's referee list doesn't look at court rulings; it's purely a sponsor risk checklist.
FIFA issued no statement and didn't bother to explain its reasoning. It simply crossed him off the World Cup list. The Metropolitan Police's closure report held no weight at the Zurich headquarters. Once a person has been tagged with "suspected of sexual offenses against a minor," legal exoneration doesn't matter. If the sponsors think he's guilty, that's enough.
Dieperink vented to the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, saying the false accusations made him very sad and that he regretted FIFA's decision not to appoint him for the World Cup.
In 2022, the KNVB produced a feature on him. Dieperink revealed that he also worked part-time in the catering industry, admitting that combining it with football was often difficult. A Dutch media outlet later gave it a blunter headline: He didn't want to rely on football to make a living, but football was his life.
He officiated 84 Eredivisie matches. In the KNVB's press releases, he was a "good colleague," but on his personal financial statements, he was still a blue-collar worker who needed to wait tables to pay his bills. The 2024 Europa League final VAR support role, the European Championship, the Paris Olympics—these titles sounded like a fast track to the World Cup. But strip away the filter, and he hadn't even secured a full-time referee contract.
July 13, Borculo.
Police ruled out the involvement of a third party, but the exact cause of death has not been released to this day.
The uniform he was supposed to take to the World Cup is probably still hanging in his closet.