The match of the 6th round of the Europa League group tournament between the Greek "Olympiakos" and the French "Nantes" (0:2) was the last in the international career of the Ukrainian FIFA referee Serhii Boyk.
Sergey BoykoA native of Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi, Odesa region, and currently a representative of the Kyiv Regional Football Association, received the FIFA category in 2011. The Ukrainian played his first match as the chief referee on February 9, 2011, recording a zero draw in Trabzon in a friendly match between the teams of Turkey and South Korea (0:0). In the European Cups, the first game took place on July 21, when Aktobe of Kazakhstan hosted Kechkemet of Hungary - interestingly, it also ended in a goalless draw.
In total, in 12 years in FIFA status, Boyko has refereed 74 matches, and including the work as the fourth official and assistant referee behind the goal, this number reaches the grandmaster mark of 100 matches. The Ukrainian worked in the qualification games of the Champions League (4 matches), qualification, group round and play-offs of the Europa League (39 matches), qualification and group round of the Conference League (6 matches), group tournament of the Nations League (3 matches), qualifying matches of the championship of the world and Europe (10 matches).
Also in 2013, Boyko worked at the final tournament of the European Youth Championship (U21), where he refereed three matches. Among them is the semi-final between the teams of Spain and Norway, in which the Pyrenees won (3:0) and later became champions of the continent at the level of youth teams.
There were ambiguous matches in the referee's career. In particular, the match of the third qualifying round of the Europa League 2015/16 between the Cypriot Apollon and the Azerbaijani Gabala immediately comes to mind. After the visitors equalized in the stoppage time, Boyko took the players of both teams from the field to the stands, and after a certain time he returned everyone to the field and played for a few more minutes. Everyone thought that the referee made a mistake with the timing, but in fact there was a disturbance in the stands, foreign objects were flying onto the field, and this step was forced for the safety of the players.
And there are also two matches of the group stage of the Europa League ("Astra" - "Celtic" in 2014, when the Romanian club was led by ex-football player "Dnipro" and "Dynamo" Oleg Protasov, and "Dynamo" Zagreb - "Spartak" Trnava in 2018 mu), in which Serhii Boyko had to be tried in dense fog. And only the willful decision of our referee made it possible to hold these matches on time and avoid postponements to the next day.
According to statistical data, in international matches, as a referee, the KOAF representative showed football players 295 warnings (on average, almost four per game), sent off 20 players and awarded 27 penalties.
The geography of matches of the KOAF representative includes 33 European countries. Most often - five times - Boyko flew to Kazakhstan, four times - to Belgium, Greece and Turkey. The most - eight times - the Ukrainian referee crossed the football field with teams from Belgium, seven times - with clubs from Greece and Israel. Among the teams with which Boyko crossed paths are representatives of the top championships of Spain (Villarreal, Betis, Athletic), Italy (Lazio), Germany (Leipzig, Union), France (Bordeaux ", "Rennes", "Nantes").
