UEFA has announced that Björn Kuipers will officiate in Sunday’s European Championship 2020 final between England and Italy at Wembley.
The Dutchman has not yet judged England in this summer’s tournament, although he was named the fourth official in the Three Lions opening match when they won 1-0 over Croatia – for any of you looking for a good sign.
The match will be Kuiper’s third as a judge at Euro 2020 after taking responsibility for Belgium’s 2-1 group victory against Denmark and Spain’s pounding 5-0 group victory against Slovakia, while his only outing in the competition stage came in the quarterfinals when he watched Denmark’s 2-1 victory over the Czech Republic.
The 48-year-old has been an international judge since 2006 and he will now make history when he became the first Dutchman to judge a final in the European Championships.
Kuipers has never judged a major international tournament final, although he is well versed in taking responsibility for the UEFA competition final after having previously judged seven different exhibition events.
The mentioned games include the Champions League final 2014 between Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid and two Europa League finals.
Björn Kuipers has so far refereed three matches at Euro 2020 / Valetin Ogirenko – Pool / Getty Images
Of course, we scrape for as many good brands as we can find, and the only two UEFA finals he has judged with either England or English teams have had different results, with Chelsea beating Benfica in the 2013 Europa League final and Germany Under- 21 beat England under 21s 4-0 in the final of 21-EM 2009 – yes, we tried.
The announcement of who will officiate the final was accompanied by details of the rest of the officials for the match, with Bastian Dankert from Germany being named Video Assistant Referee.
Alongside Dankert, Kuiper’s compatriot Pol van Boekel will be one of the VAR assistants as well as the German pairing Christian Gittelmann and Marco Fritz.
The Dutch Sander van Roekel and Erwin Zeinstra will be assistant referees for the final with the Spaniard Carlos Del Cerro Grande in fourth official position, while Juan Carlos Yuste Jimenez is the reserve assistant referee on standby at the match.
