Bulgarian refereeing is establishing itself on the international football scene with impressive appointments in European club tournaments. Georgi Kabakov, a leading national referee, will referee the match between Swedish Hacken and Norwegian Bran in the third qualifying round of the tournament.
The prestigious match is scheduled for August 7 at 20:00 at the "Hisingen Arena" stadium in Gothenburg. Both teams have an interesting path to this stage of the competition. Hacken managed to eliminate Belgian Anderlecht after an extremely tense penalty series, while Bran dropped out of the Champions League after a match with Austrian RB Salzburg.
Kabakov's refereeing team includes Martin Venev and Martin Margaritov as his assistants, and Mariyan Grebencharski from Samokov is appointed as the fourth referee. Dragomir Draganov is responsible for video replays (VAR), assisted by Vasimir El Hatib.
Before the European match, Kabakov has already refereed a First League match between Spartak (Varna) and Botev (Vratsa). In European tournaments, he already has experience with the Europa League match between Besiktas and Shakhtar (Donetsk), which ended with a result of 2:4.
In parallel, Radoslav Gidjenov receives an equally responsible appointment in the Conference League. The 33-year-old Plovdiv referee will referee the return match between Scottish Hibernian and Serbian Partizan from Belgrade.
The match is scheduled for August 14 at 22:00 at the "Easter Road" stadium in Edinburgh. An interesting detail is the presence of Yanis Karabelyov in the Partizan squad – a Slavia graduate and former footballer of Botev (Plovdiv).
Gidjenov will be assisted by Miroslav Maksimov and Petar Mitrev as side referees, with Volen Chinkov as the fourth referee. Nikola Popov is the main VAR referee, and Dimitar Dimitrov from Sofia will be his assistant.