Former women’s national football team defender Anastasia Pustovoitova will be the first Russian national to referee a Champions League final after the UEFA selected her to officiate the women’s final later this month.
Olympique Lyonnais play FC Barcelona Femenino in Hungary on May 18. No Russian — male or female — has refereed a Champions League final since the annual club competition’s modern-day inception in the early 1990s.
Pustovoitova will be flanked by fellow Russian Yekaterina Kurochkina, Romania’s Claudia Iugulescu and Hungary’s Katalin Kulcsár, the UEFA Referees Committee announced on Wednesday.
Pustovoitova, 38, has also been tapped to officiate the FIFA Women’s World Cup in France this summer, the committee said.
