ss="toctext">Notes
He began his judicial career at an early age, from 16 years old. By 1998, he was included in the list of assistant referees in the Football League .
By December 2002, Atkinson worked as the chief referee at the matches of the Football Conference , [1] and was also the chief referee of the 2003 FA Youth Cup final.
By the start of the 2003/04 season, Atkinson was on England's national referee list. From August 2004 to October 2005 he did not remove a single player from the field.
Just two years after his debut at the Conference, Atkinson was nominated for the Premier League match between Manchester City and Birmingham City . In this match, which took place on April 20, 2005, he showed only one yellow card and awarded one penalty to the guests. [2] [3]
On August 13, 2006, Atkinson was the main referee of the match at the English Super Cup , in which Liverpool and Chelsea met. [4] Also in 2006, he was included on the FIFA arbitrators list. [5]
Atkinson won the qualifying match of the World Cup between the national teams of Germany and Finland in October 2009, which ended with a score of 1: 1. [6]
In April 2010, in the Birmingham derby between Aston Villa and Birmingham City , Atkinson awarded a penalty at the end of the meeting for a foul by Roger Johnson in Gabriel Agbonlahor . Television repetitions indicate that Johnson played the ball and there was no foul. Birmingham's head coach criticized Atkinson for this decision, which guaranteed Aston Villa a 1-0 victory [7] [8] .
Atkinson was criticized for refereeing in the match between Chelsea and Manch width=22 height=12 class=thumbborder srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/33px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/44px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png 2x" data-file-width=1235 data-file-height=650> USA
Interstate I-94 passes through the city.