UEFA fulfilled a childhood dream by uniting Bulgaria with North Macedonia.
Our top favorite Hristiyana Guteva is in the team of her neighbor Ivana Projkovska for one of the most interesting matches in the women’s Champions League “Juventus” – “Bayern” (Munich).
Quite an interesting team has been made for this match. Projkovska will play the match, and she will be assisted by Nargiz Magau (Kazakhstan) and Svitlana Grushko (Ukraine). Guteva will be the fourth judge. The observer of the referees is Eleni Kirou from Greece, and the delegate on duty is Ermina Hadibaoric from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Or they are all from different countries, which happens quite rarely.
The match is on Wednesday, and in the remaining three matches the four referees are from the same country. This probably means that Guteva can also appear in a bigger championship after trying out how he interacts with different referees.
Projkovska is the top favorite of the neighbors, as she is already officiating men’s matches as well. The same applies to Christiana.
For the first time, the young referee from Samokov, Marijan Grebencharski, will also travel abroad. He was appointed by the BFS as the fourth referee of the trio Georgi Ginchev, Georgi Davidov and Ivo Kolev.
Grebencharski is clearly vocal about the new hope in refereeing, since they are already sending him to international matches.
Radek Prihoda from the Czech Republic will evaluate our four referees, and the duty delegate is Lukasz Sajski from Poland.
Dama will be a delegate on duty at the last match of our youth national team against Israel.
It will be Diana Bulguru from Moldova. UEFA apparently decided that this match was good for experimentation, as they appointed referees from San Marino for the match. Michel Beltrano will be in charge, assisted by Gian Marco Escolani and Ernesto Costillano. The fourth arbitrator is Mattia Andrucciali.
Both teams have no chance of European qualification, and the match is only to determine the final classification in the group.
It is said in the BFS that this could be the last match for the youth coach Alexander Dimitrov, who for another qualification failed to clear the team.
As for the class of our men’s international referees, the fact that not one of them received a two-round League of Nations outfit at the expense of referees from almost the whole of Europe speaks volumes.
The BFS should have already sent FIFA its proposal for international referees for 2025, with the list to be approved by the world headquarters.
No major roster shake-up is expected, although most of our referees have not been handed a kit since the summer and have been hanging in the bottom bracket of the UEFA rankings for years with no chance of development and promotion.
Bulgaria has only one referee in the first group of the rankings, which is the second level, and that is Georgi Kabakov. All others are in the lowest second category. However, Radoslav Gidzenov is expected to get a promotion after being appointed to a European Championship final, albeit for juniors.