47-year-old Aleksandar Stavrev from North Macedonia will be the referee of the Europa League matchday 2 game between TSG 1899 Hoffenheim and FC Dynamo Kyiv.
The future referee was born on March 30 1977 in the current capital of North Macedonia – Skopje. By his major profession, he’s a mechanical engineer. Having overcome all levels of domestic football quite quickly, at the age of 25, Aleksandar began to work in the Macedonian top league.
Stavrev has had a FIFA category since 2006. It’s noteworthy that in May of that year he was appointed to the Euro-2006 (U17) finals, held in Luxembourg, where he refereed two games of the group stage and the semifinal.
In July of 2007, the Macedonian received his first euro cups assignment, namely the preliminary round of the UEFA Cup, and in November he made his debut at the national level, working at the match between Georgia and Lithuania (2:0). In Stavrev’s career, there were two final tournaments of the continental championship – Euro-2008 (U19) in the Czech Republic and Euro-2011 (U21) in Denmark, where he received two appointments for group stage matches at each.
Since 2009/2010 season, Aleksandar has been regularly appointed to matches of the main stages of European tournaments. Stavrev refereed his debut match of the Champions League group stage in October of 2011 – Barcelona vs Viktoria. He became the first Macedonian referee to be appointed to a match of the main stage of the most prestigious club tournament of the Old World.
It’s noteworthy that during his 18-year international career, Stavrev crossed paths with Dynamo only once. It happened at the group stage of the 2019/2020 Europa League as he recorded the White-Blues’ home win over the Swedish side Malmö. The only goal in the match was scored in the 84th minute by the current captain of the team Vitalii Buialskyi.
The game at the Rhein-Neckar-Arena will start at 19:35 Kyiv time.
