Istvan Kovacs will referee Wednesday’s Champions League qualifier between Celtic and Astana.
The 31-year-old Romanian whistler has never taken charge of a Champions League match but has extensive experience of underage European matches at club and international level.
Last season Kovacs took charge of three Europa League qualifying matches plus one low key group match between Qabala and Kuban Krasnador. In season 14/15 he was also in charge of Kuban Krasnador’s Europa League group match against Everton at Goodison Park.
Thomas Weyhing from Germany will be the UEFA Delegate while Leif Sundell from Sweden will be the Referee Observer.
With the tie poised at 1-1 there is all to play for with the winner assured of European football until Christmas with the losers dropping into the Europa League play-off round.
There is bound to be some needle in the match after last week’s first leg produced four yellow cards and ended with a stramash that saw Scott Brown booked, apparently for being the Celtic captain.
Astana were unhappy at Leigh Griffiths who was booked shortly before scoring the crucial away goal.
The Celtic striker clashed with an Astana defender who ended up on the deck. Griffiths was booked for the clash with Astana trying to get UEFA to apply further punishment to no avail.
Looking back at the incident Griffiths said: “There was a bit of handbags and one of their men went down. Both of us could have been booked to be honest. The ref could have let it go but I was the one who got booked. But I managed to silence the crowd a few minutes later so it worked out fine.”
