The match of the 18th round of the national championship between Torpedo and Neman was the last for Aleksei Kulbakov, the most accomplished referee of Belarus in the 21st century.
Aleksei Kulbakov began to referee in 1996, at the age of 16, when he was periodically assigned matches in the championship of the Gomel region. Very soon, he was noticed by specialists, and his career quickly went uphill: in 1998, Aleksei (not yet 19 years old) was trusted with games of the championship of Belarus in the second division, in 2000 – first division, in 2001 - the national youth tournament and the Cup. In 1998, Kulbakov was in the first referee category and only four years later promoted to national level. In the spring of 2003, at the age of 23, his long-awaited debut in the highest league took place on 12 May at the Youth City Stadium. He received special compliments from the honorary coach of Belarus, Nikolai Blashko, who inspected that match, and therefore he soon received a second match, followed immediately by the third and so on. At that time, no one knew that a new star had risen in the domestic refereeing.
In May 2005, Kulbakov refereed his first Belarus Cup final at the capital stadium Dynamo. Around the same time started Aleksei's international career, that developed steadily. His first match outside Belarus was Portugal – Albania, at a youth tournament in January 2004. Kulbakov received his FIFA badge in 2006 and, since then, his name has never left the refereeing list of FIFA. He refereed his first European Cup match in June 2006 (Daugavpils – Torshavn), followed by his first match of national teams (Cyprus – San Marino) in September 2007.
In 2008, there was a breakthrough in the career of a rapidly progressing Belarusian: Kulbakov became one of the 19 participants of the UEFA program "Talents and Mentors" for promising European referees. Over the next two years, Aleksei refereed UEFA matches under the leadership of the referee observer Andreas Schluchter from Switzerland. Since the 2009-10 season, the Belarusian began to receive regular appointments in the group stage of the Europa League (first match CFR Cluj – FC Copenhagen). From the 2014-15 season, he began to referee matches in the group stage of the Champions League, with the debut on 9 December 2014 (Benfica - Bayer Leverkusen).
In 2006, Kulbakov was in the fourth category of UEFA referees, but advanced quickly: 2008 – Category 3, 2009 – Category 2, 2011 – Category 1. In June 2019, He was promoted to the Elite category, which includes the top 26 leading European referees. Kulbakov's track record includes European U-17 Championship 2006 in Luxembourg (including the match for the third place Spain - Germany), the European U-19 Championship 2013 in Lithuania (including the final France - Serbia), and the European U-21 Championship 2019. He was involved in Euro 2016 in France as a reserve referee in 8 matches. In 2020, when the pandemic was rampant around the world, Aleksei became a participant in a very interesting experiment - to obtain international experience, he refereed in foreign competitions, such as Saudi Arabia, Greece and Libya.
During his long career, Kulbakov, a 44-year-old native of Gomel, refereed 535 matches, where he awarded 142 penalty kicks and issued 1836 yellow cards, 32 second yellow cards and 40 red cards. Aleksei leads the Belarusian Referees Club, established by the "Pressball," which includes referees who completed at least 300 games of the highest category. In the second place, after Kulbakov, is the best Belarusian referee of the last century, Vadim Zhuk with 389 matches, followed by Sergey Shmolik with 344. From the current generation of referees, the most matches in the highest category have Viktor Shimusik (210) and Dmitry Dmitriev (201).
Kulbakov’s national matches: 330 in the top national division, 48 in the Belarus Cup, 4 in the Super Cup, 15 in foreign national competitions. International matches: 88 in European Cups (Champions League 21, Europa League 61, Conference League 4, Intertoto Cup 2), 36 games with the participation of national A teams and 14 with national youth teams. Out of his 88 European Cup matches, 42 were in the group stage (Champions League 14, Europa League 25, Conference League 3), wile 12 were in the Europa League knock-out stage. Kulbakov’s domestic records: six finals of the Belarusian Cup (2005, 2008, 2016, 2017, 2023, 2024) and four Super Cups (2017, 2018, 2020, 2022). He was recognized seven times as the best referee in Belarus (2004, 2008, 2010, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2023).
Source: Pressball
