Brazilian football authorities banned 29-year-old Ana Paula Oliveira from officiating after she posed for a well-known gentlemen’s publication in July 2007. She was banned from football for 245 days but, after serving her time, recently returned to action running the line in the 1-1 draw between between São José and Taquaritinga.

Oliveira had courted controversy on the field in May 2005 after wrongly disallowing a goal in a crucial Copa Brasil match and received a three-game suspension. Two months later, her steamy photoshoot served to raise the ire of the Brazilian FA even further and the authorities punished her accordingly.

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The raunchy ref, who had previously campaigned for women’s rights, later revealed her mother urged her to go ahead with the photoshoot. But it’s unlikely she harbours any regrets after reportedly earning £125,000 from the deal.

Ana Paula Oliveira isn’t the first controversial figure to bare all for Brazilian edition of Playboy. In October 2007, Monica Veloso, a TV presenter who had an affair with a politician, adorned the magazine’s cover and copies flew off the newsstands. In 2005, the magazine also showcased the charms of Camilla Amaral, a political aide whose boss had been involved in a financial scandal.

Bringing things back to sport, perhaps the magazine’s most unlikely cover star must surely be football fan Rosenery Mello who became a national celebrity in 1989 after she was arrested for throwing a flare at Chilean players during a 1989 World Cup qualifying game against Brazil. Mello, who was 24 at the time, became known as the “Firecracker of the Maracana”, in reference to the Rio stadium where the infamous incident took place.