UEFA has appointed referees for the return match of the 2nd qualifying round of the Champions League between Belgrade’s Partizan and Kyiv’s Dynamo, which will take place on July 31 in the capital of Serbia.
Marian BarbuAll referees represent Romania. The on-field referee is Marian Barbu. He will be assisted by Mihai Marica and Imre Buchi on the lines. The fourth official is Sebastian Colțescu.
As for the main referee of the upcoming match, the 35-year-old Barbu has been officiating international matches since 2021, but you wouldn't call him experienced yet: throughout his career, he has officiated 28 such matches (combined at the club level and at the national team level in competitions of all age categories).
This Romanian referee has never officiated a match involving Dynamo, but in the 2022/23 season, he officiated a group stage match of the Conference League between Vaduz and Dnipro-1 (1:2).
Additionally, in the spring of 2022, Barbu was the main referee for the qualifying match of the Youth Euro-2022 between Ukraine (U-17) and Italy (U-17) (1:3).
Barbu can be considered a fairly lenient referee: he shows an average of 4 yellow cards per match and resorts to direct red cards approximately in every 12th match.
