The Chinese Football Association (CFA) announced on Saturday it would form its own professional referee team, which would include both domestic and overseas distinguished football referees.

At the briefing, CFA confirmed that the professional referee team will be built by a combination of domestic elite referees and signed overseas professional referees. Chinese referees Ma Ning, Fu Ming, Zhang Lei and two foreign referees Mark Clattenburg and Milorad Mazic will become the first professional referees to CFA.

The former Premier League ref Mark Clattenburg has finished a two-year stint as director of refereeing in Saudi Arabia and will be one of five professional referees in the Chinese top flight from next month.

"Introducing the professional referee system will promote the comprehensive development of Chinese football referees, the levels and standards of referees will be improved to ensure all football leagues in China play a fair and impartial game," said Chen Yongliang, the director of Chinese Super League Department.

Chen also said, in the coming season of CFA Super League, special funds will be set up to encourage all teams to play with more net match time. The Super League will set the 60 minutes net match time goal for the teams.

Any team which achieves the goal will be awarded a "60 minutes net match time" trophy and 100,000 yuan (15,000 U.S. dollars). The League will also set the "season net match time biggest improvement award" and the "highest season net match time award", both requiring at least 55 minutes. Winners of the awards will be granted one million and two million yuan (150,000 U.S. dollars and 300,000 U.S. dollars) respectively.

Chen said the CFA Super League will publish the top 80 domestic players ranked by their comprehensive abilities in every round of the Super League Game, adding that "it will help Chinese national football team pick players with more scientific basis."