Szymon Marciniak
Szymon Marciniak (born 7 January 1981) is a Polish professional football referee. He is considered one of the most highly-rated Polish referees. Early career. He was born in 1981 in Płock, Poland. He began his career as a football referee at the age of 21. Initially, he combined refereeing football matches with playing as an amateur footballer. In 2006, he switched to working as a football referee professionally. He refereed his first match in the top Polish professional league Klasa C in 2009 at the GKS Bełchatów stadium. Since then, he has refereed more than 200 matches  in Ekstraklasa having been appointed the head referee in the 2016 Polish Cup final match as well as the 2017 Polish SuperCup final. International career. He became a FIFA listed referee in 2011. The same year, he also debuted as a referee in the Europa League in the qualifying match between Aalesunds FK and Ferencvárosi TC. In 2012, he refereed his first match in the Champions League between FK Ventspils and Molde FK. He refereed at 2014 FIFA World Cup qualifiers, beginning with the Group F match between Portugal and Azerbaijan. On 30 June 2015 he was the head referee  at the 2015 UEFA European Under-21 Championship Final. He participated in the 2016 UEFA European Championships and refereed three matches: Spain-Czech Republic and Iceland-Austria in the group stage of the tournament as well as Germany-Slovakia in the knockout phase. On 29 March 2018, FIFA announced that he would officiate some matches at 2018 FIFA World Cup along with Pawel Sokolnicki and Tomasz Listkiewicz as assistant referees. He officiated two group stage matches: Argentina-Iceland and Germany-Sweden. He was also selected as the head referee in the 2018 UEFA Super Cup final match between Real Madrid and  Atlético Madrid.