UEFA appoint familiar referee to Champions League final

UEFA appoint familiar referee to Champions League final

UEFA have confirmed their match official appointments for the Champions League final, and Arsenal will be very familiar with the referee for the game.

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UEFA have confirmed their team of match officials for the Champions League final, ahead of the fixture in Budapest later this month.

German official Daniel Siebert will referee the match, assisted by Jan Seidel and Rafael Foltyn (both also from Germany), with Swiss national Sandro Scharer as the fourth official. Guadalupe Porras Ayuso of Spain will be the backup assistant referee.

Bastian Dankert will be on VAR, assisted by Robert Schroder, again both from Germany. Carlos Del Cerro Grande of Spain will be the VAR support for the match.

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This will be Siebert’s first UEFA club competition final, but Arsenal fans will be aware of him from their team’s run through the knockout stages so far.

Siebert referee the quarter-final first leg between Sporting CP and Arsenal, then the semi-final second leg between Arsenal and Atletico Madrid. Both matches finished in 1-0 wins for the Gunners.

Fortunately, we’re not talking about the referee who took the controversial semi-final first leg in Madrid, or else this might be considered significantly worse news.

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Siebert had also refereed Arsenal on two occasions prior to this season, a 3-1 Europa League knockout win over Olympiacos, and a 3-0 Champions League League Phase win over GNK Dinamo. Arsenal didn’t benefit from any penalty or red-card decisions in those games, but it’s still a good omen.

On the other hand, Siebert has refereed PSG on four previous occasions, with three wins and one draw for the Ligue 1 side. So both sides are unbeaten with this referee up to this point.