Austrian referee Sebastian Gishamer, who will officiate the Sabah-Slavia Prague match in the second round of the UEFA Champions League league phase, also works as a civil engineer.
Operative Information Center-OMM reports that the referee, whose main profession is civil engineering, will turn 38 tomorrow, the day of the match.
The Austrian referee began his professional career on April 15, 2017, and is known for maintaining strict discipline on the pitch. The UEFA Champions League match between Sabah and Czech side Slavia Prague will be his 240th. The 37-year-old has shown 1,070 yellow cards, 34 straight red cards and 32 red cards following a second yellow in the 239 matches he has officiated so far.
The experienced referee has also awarded 78 penalties. In his matches, Gishamer has averaged 4.48 yellow cards and 0.14 red cards.
The 37-year-old has been a FIFA referee since 2019 and has been among UEFA’s Category I referees since the 2023-24 season.
Gishamer has also officiated matches involving Azerbaijani teams. He was in charge of the national team’s 2-1 defeat to Ukraine in Poland in the qualifying round for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
The FIFA referee officiated Qarabag’s 1-0 away win over Swedish side Hacken in the UEFA Europa League group stage in 2023, as well as Azerbaijan’s Under-21 team’s 5-0 friendly defeat to the Czech Republic in 2017.
Gishamer has been a referee since 2004 and has officiated matches in the Austrian Bundesliga since the 2016-17 season.
The Sabah-Slavia match is scheduled to kick off at 20:45 tomorrow at Baku Olympic Stadium.
