Former Ukrainian FIFA referee Sergii Boiko recently moved to the USA and will be refereeing his first MLS match on 15 April 2023: FC Dallas – Real Salt Lake. Boiko is following Alan Kelly (former FIFA referee in Ireland) and Matthew Conger (current FIFA referee in New Zealand) who previously made the move to the USA and refereed MLS matches.
Sergii Boiko (45) ended his international career in November 2022, after refereeing Olympiakos – Nantes in the group stage of the UEFA Europa League. He reached FIFA level in 2011 and his first international match was Turkey – Korea. During his 12 years on the FIFA List, Boiko has refereed 74 international matches (including his fourth official and additional assistant referee appointments, this number reaches 100 matches). The Ukrainian also refereed in the preliminary rounds of the UEFA Champions League (4 matches), preliminary, group stage and play-offs of the UEFA Europa League (39 matches), preliminary and group stage of the UEFA Conference League (6 matches), group stage of the Nations League (3 matches), World Cup and Euro qualifiers (10 matches). In 2013, Boiko was appointed to the UEFA U-21 Euro, where he refereed 3 matches, including the semi-final between Spain and Norway.
There were some ambiguous matches in the referee's career. In particular, the match of the third qualifying round of the Europa League 2015/16 between the Cypriot Apollon and the Azerbaijani Gabala immediately comes to mind. After the visitors equalized in the stoppage time, Boiko took the players of both teams off the field, and after a certain time he returned to the field and resumed the match for a few more minutes. Everyone thought that the referee made a mistake with the timing, but in fact there was a disturbance in the stands, foreign objects were flying onto the field, and this action was necessary for the safety of the players. There are also two matches of the group stage of the Europa League (Astra - Celtic in 2014 and Dynamo Zagreb - Spartak Trnava in 2018), in which Boiko had to referee in dense fog and only the willful decision of the referee made it possible to hold these matches on time and avoid postponements to the next day. According to statistical data, in international matches, Boiko issued 295 yellow cards (on average, almost 4/game), sent-off 20 players and awarded 27 penalty kicks. The geography of his matches includes 33 European countries. Most often - five times - Boiko went to Kazakhstan, four times - to Belgium, Greece, and Turkey. The most - eight times - the Ukrainian referee shared the football field with teams from Belgium, seven times - with clubs from Greece and Israel. Among the teams with which Boyko crossed paths are representatives of Spain (Villarreal, Betis, Athletic), Italy (Lazio), Germany (Leipzig, Union), France (Bordeaux, Rennes, Nantes).
Source: Dynamo Kiev
