The Socceroos may have dipped out of the World Cup finals last week but there's still at least one Australian in the thick of the action.

Brisbane-based referee Mark Shield and two Australian assistant referees Ben Wilson and Nathan Gibson, are among 12 "refereeing trios" selected by the FIFA Referees Committee, from an original 26, to remain for the finals stage of the tournament.

The Committee is expected on Thursday to announce the officials assigned to both the final in Berlin on July 9 and the third-place playoff in Stuttgart, the day before.

"There's still an opportunity," Shield, 32, told AAP.

"There's 12 referees retained for the finals series and no announcement's been made yet."

Shield has so far been in charge of two matches in the tournament, during the group stage - Tunisia versus Saudi Arabia and Iran versus Angola - and was fourth official for the Round of 16 match between Brazil and Ghana and Brazil versus France in the quarter-finals.

He is also the fourth official for the upcoming semi-final in Munich between France and Portugal (Thursday morning AEST).

"Every match is a big match, so how to deal with pressure and big match situations is really the experience that you gain at World Cup final level," Shield said.

"You can only referee so many internationals a year and the World Cup finals is the biggest tournament.

"There's a lot more people watching, there's a lot more interest so if you learn to deal with that, it's a good thing to take away."

He said the multi-million dollar appearance fees available to the participating teams' national associations and the massive global television audience and saturation coverage through other print and electronic outlets, put pressure on referees to avoid errors.

"Whether it's the World Cup finals or an A-League match, no one likes making mistakes," he said.

"As crazy as it sounds because it is a World Cup match, it's the red team versus the blue team, that's the way you've got to treat it.

"Mistakes are bound to happen, it's football. Referees are expected to be perfect all the time but that's just not possible."

Shield cautiously welcomed the introduction of new technologies to assist making better decisions.

"We've got communications devices for the first time in a World Cup finals, so that's a technological improvement," he said.

"But you're never going to see in football what you see in rugby league and rugby union where the play is stopped and they go to video referee.

"You're not going to see that in football because it's too free-flowing. In the time it takes after one incident to check the video, the ball could be up the other end of the field and a goal scored."

FIFA had recently trialled a 'smart ball' which incorporated a computer chip and would likely continue testing "bits and pieces" over time to see what worked best.

Shield said communications headsets between the five match officials had brought some benefits at the World Cup.

"There's been examples in both my games where the assistants have drawn attention to something that maybe I saw from a different angle and you can talk about it, so it works very well," he said.

Controversial refereeing decisions have been one of the key criticisms of Germany's World Cup finals.

English referee Graham Poll, who mistakenly issued three yellow cards to the same player during the Australia versus Croatia group match, was among the 16 refereeing trios sent home last week.

But Spanish referee Luis Medina Cantalejo, who during the Round of 16 stage awarded Italy a disputed penalty that allowed it to eliminate Australia 1-0, was rewarded with whistling duties for France's spectacular quarter-final elimination of Brazil on the weekend.

German referee, Marcus Merk, who officiated Australia's first group match against Japan, was also among the remaining 36 officials.

Shield, who was earlier this year announced as the inaugural A-League's 'Referee of the Year', also officiated at the 2002 World Cup in Korea/Japan.

As was the case four years ago, the 32-year-old will once again be among the youngest of the remaining referees.

The Football Federation Australia said the only other Australians to have refereed at the World Cup were Tony Boskovic, in 1974 and 1982, Chris Bambridge in 1986 and Eddie Lennie in 1998.

Richard Lorenc in 1990 and both Gordon Dunster and Eugene Brazzale in 1994, had also officiated as assistant referees.

Brought to you by AAP © 2024 AAP