Ekaterina is 21 years old but her love for football began when she was 13. At first she played football in the company of her male friends but soon became a player in the local women's team.
“Since childhood I have loved sports and most of all I was always attracted to football,” Ekaterina told Sputnik Mundo.
In 2013, she was offered to be a referee for several matches and that’s when her meteoric rise started.
“I wanted to continue to develop as a referee and not as a player,” she said, adding that now she knows for sure that her future is directly linked to football.
However, being a football referee may have its drawbacks as for example, in Spain, during the second match of the Catalan Division, a fan insulted a female referee [Martha Gallego] by shouting “Go wash the dishes!”
Talking about whether the Russian referee has ever faced such remarks, Ekaterina said that there have been some unpleasant moments during the match but there had never been a violent disapproval of her work on the field.
“Of course, there have been different remarks, but nothing rude. In any case, I don’t respond and I try to disengage myself from such moments. I draw conclusions for myself,” the referee said.
She even remembered an interesting case during her own arbiter career, when during one match heavy rain started and people from the crowd came up to her offering their jackets and umbrellas.
“I was very pleased, even though I could not take them,” Ekaterina recalls.
Talking about her secret for keeping an amazing figure, the referee said that she actively goes to the gym, eats healthy and works hard in university where she is studying to become a physical education teacher.
The fact that Ekaterina was given the unofficial title of the most beautiful woman referee of Russia came as quite a shock for her as she had not expected to gain so much popularity all over Russia literally overnight.
She said that she gets thousands of messages, not only from her compatriots, but also from fans of football [and pretty girls] from around Europe and America.
At the moment, Ekaterina is single because she is completely focused on her work.
