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Polish referee Szymon Marciniak has been appointed to take charge of the 2022 FIFA World Cup final between France and Argentina at Lusail Stadium in Qatar on Sunday.
The 41-year-old official from Plock, who has been an international referee since 2011, will be accompanied by assistant referees and compatriots Paweł Sokolnicki and Tomasz Listkiewicz.
CORE graduates
Marciniak is the first referee from Poland to officiate at a World Cup final. Along with Listkiewicz, he is a graduate of UEFA’s long-standing Centre of Refereeing Excellence (CORE) programme, which has prepared considerable numbers of promising young match officials for an international refereeing career.
Marciniak and Listkiewicz attended the very first CORE course in 2010.
Impressive career
A former footballer who played in midfield for Polish top-flight outfit Wisła Płock, Marciniak took up full-time refereeing in 2006.
He adds the World Cup final to an impressive list of club and national team assignments which include the 2018 UEFA Super Cup match and the 2015 UEFA European Under-21 Championship final, as well as duty at UEFA EUROs 2016 and 2020 and the 2018 World Cup.
When he was selected for the UEFA EURO 2016 team in France, Marciniak was the first CORE graduate to referee at a EURO final tournament.
Tomasz Listkiewicz’s father Michal Listkiewicz was an international referee who also served as a linesman at the 1990 World Cup final between West Germany and Argentina in Rome.
Marciniak has been part of a strong, solid and united European refereeing team at the Qatar World Cup. This continent has provided eleven referees, 20 assistant referees and eleven video assistant referees (VAR) for the tournament.
Qatar’s CORE link
Meanwhile, the three match officials from Qatar selected for Saturday’s third-place match between Morocco and Croatia have also benefitted from UEFA’s refereeing expertise and contribution to developing referees beyond Europe.
Referee Abdulrahman Al Jassim and assistant referees Taleb Al Marri and Saoud Ahmed Almaqaleh all gathered crucial experience and knowledge at UEFA CORE courses which has stood them in good stead along their career pathways.
