Please find below the list of selected main referees for 2025 UEFA Under 21 Championship.
Slovakia, 11 - 28 June 2025
Jakob Alexander Sundberg DEN
Goga Kikacheishvili GEO
Vasilios Fotias GRE
Alessandro Dudic SUISimone Sozza ITA
Sander van der Eijk NEDDamian Sylwestrzak POL
Nicholas Walsh SCO
Nenad Minaković SRB
In addition, following the UEFA - CONMEBOL exchange protocol, there will be a guest refereeing team from South America, to be announced later.
The competition will be played with VAR.
Rather 'low profile' selection with mostly Second Cats and freshly arrived First Cats, maybe because there's no Olympic qualifying at stake in this tournament.
ReplyDeleteIf I'm not mistaken, none of the selected refs have any CL GS/LS experience.
(Indeed, Walsh did a CL GS this season - Brest vs Sturm Graz)
DeleteWith some exceptions, there are less experienced referees chosen than expected.
ReplyDeleteEspecially Dudic without even a Conference League game so far.
Quite a "distance" to the top names Sozza (EL R16) and Walsh (CL GS) in this group.
Slovakia no! Congratulations Ružbarský!!!
ReplyDeleteAlso deserve a moment of attention for Sylwestrzak (CLE play-off) and Minaković
ReplyDeleteDudic is an excellent profile, very well deserved to be nominated for this tournament, in my opinion together with Sozza they are the two with the most potential. We will be watching closely to see how the Swiss ref progresses.
ReplyDeleteI can't judge whether Dudic's nomination is deserved. However, I wonder why UEFA hasn't used him at least once in the group stage of the Conference League since 2022, when he became a FIFA referee. On the one hand, they demand transparent decisions from their referees, on the other hand, I find their appointments anything but comprehensible: Now we have referees at the U21 EURO with experience in the Champions League as well as others without a single European Cup appearance so far. Chris Kavanagh and Juan Martínez Munuera made their debuts in the Champions League last autumn, after both did not appea in the entire European Cup last season, the latter having only refereed one game in the Europa League - six years before. Horațiu Feșnic, Giorgi Kruashvili, Allard Lindhout, Rohit Saggi and Nicholas Walsh made their debuts in the Champions League without ever having refereed a match in the knockout phase of one of these competitions before. Strange career paths ...
DeleteYes, I totally agree.
DeleteAlso Aghayev, Osmers. Schnyder and Walsh being good enough for CL GS, but then not even for a ECL KO game fits into this picture.
Walsh's case seems "particularly special": not good enough to be considered for the UEFA Advanced Course at the beginning of the year, not good enough to be considered for the current knockout stage of the European Cup, but good enough to be considered for the U21 EURO, which is actually considered a stepping stone for bigger tasks ...
DeleteWhen they will announce under 19 and under 17 EURO ?
ReplyDeleteChefren do you know maybe when will they announce video officials?
ReplyDeleteNo, this information comes from a Serbian source (very likely reported to them by the Serbian selected officials). In recent years, and I answer to David Beckham above request as well, UEFA has never released the official list of selected officials for such youth competitions (under 21, 19 and 17), differently from very old editions. A pity. We have always had to find referees from other source. I would invite UEFA to change this and to give again more communication about such tournaments like it was in past. I think that one reason behind that is the fact these tournaments have lost some credit under the eyes of committee.
DeleteThank you!
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