Peter Prendergast is a football referee

Football (soccer)

Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball...

 from Jamaica

Jamaica

Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

. A FIFA

FIFA

The Fédération Internationale de Football Association , commonly known by the acronym FIFA , is the international governing body of :association football, futsal and beach football. Its headquarters are located in Zurich, Switzerland, and its president is Sepp Blatter, who is in his fourth...

 referee since January 1, 1994, his first international match was USA against Ireland

Republic of Ireland national football team

The Republic of Ireland national football team represents Ireland in association football. It is run by the Football Association of Ireland and currently plays home fixtures at Aviva Stadium in Dublin, which opened in May 2010....

, on June 9, 1996. Since then he has refereed many matches in the CONCACAF Gold Cup

CONCACAF Gold Cup

The CONCACAF Gold Cup is the main association football competition of the men's national football teams governed by CONCACAF, determining the regional champion of North America, Central America, and the Caribbean.The Gold Cup is held every two years and when it does not fall the same year as an...

, the Olympics

Summer Olympic Games

The Summer Olympic Games or the Games of the Olympiad are an international multi-sport event, occurring every four years, organized by the International Olympic Committee. Medals are awarded in each event, with gold medals for first place, silver for second and bronze for third, a tradition that...

, the FIFA World Cup

FIFA World Cup

The FIFA World Cup, often simply the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of Fédération Internationale de Football Association , the sport's global governing body...

 and the Confederations Cup.

Prendergast is bilingual

Multilingualism

Multilingualism is the act of using, or promoting the use of, multiple languages, either by an individual speaker or by a community of speakers. Multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. Multilingualism is becoming a social phenomenon governed by the needs of...

, able to speak Spanish as well as his native English.

Controversy

Prendergast was one of the referees at the 2002 FIFA World Cup in Japan and South Korea. He was appointed as referee of the 1/8 finale match between Brazil and Belgium. In the first half he canceled a valid Belgium goal by Marc Wilmots, while he was the only one to have seen a fault (every commentator/ spectator/ player was stunned by this decision). Wilmots

Marc Wilmots

Marc Robert Wilmots is a former Belgian football player.-Career:In his club career, that started in 1987, Wilmots played for Sint-Truiden, KV Mechelen, Standard Liège, Schalke 04, and Bordeaux. At Schalke he helped them to the 1997 UEFA Cup Final...

and other players of the Belgian team say the referee apologised for this wrong decision in the catacombs at half time, The Belgians were handed over the fair play award, mainly because of this match.
Brazil went on to win the tournament, and later the players stated their 1/8 finale against Belgium was their tournament's most difficult match.