English professional football referee, Micheal Oliver has officially been announced as the lead official of Wednesday’s UEFA Champions League clash between Spanish giants Barcelona and current champions Paris Saint-Germain.
Despite controversies following Oliver’s role in the Premier League brawl between Leeds and Bournemouth in which speculations suggest that he was “much too soft,” for awarding Bournemouth a free-kick on the edge of the Leeds box. Still in the same game, Sean Longstaff was caught swaying the man from Ashington on the event of a VAR review of a goal saying, “if you disallow this goal after I’ve just done a knee slide, I’m gonna chin you after the game!” He will still be in charge of the grams come Wednesday.
Over the last 12 months, Michael Oliver has refereed a total of 33 games made up of 24 Premier League games, 3 Bations League games and 6 Champions League games. He has also been the fourth official 17 times. During this period he has issued no yellow cards and no red cards.
The 40 year old was introduced to refereeing by his father, Clive, at age 14 and has quickly progressed since becoming the youngest football referee to officiate at Wembley Stadium. He has a lot of experience handling big games and will no doubt be clinical on Wednesday.
Oliver has made a total of 40 Champions League appearance and has issued a total of 174 yellow cards and 7 red cards showing a wide predilection for giving mild punishments. According to a report by whoscore, about 22.5% of the games he officiated have resulted in draws with 30% being home wins and 47.5% being away wins in the Champions League.
He has officiated 678 games throughout his career and has issued a total of 2230 yellow cards and 53 red cards, giving an average of about 3.29 yellow cards per game. Meanwhile, in the Premier League he currently has an average of 3.23 yellow cards per game.
Oliver has notably officiated five PSG games in the champions League including the second leg of the Champions League playoff between PSG and Stade Brestois in February 2025 which ended 2-0, as well as PSG’s away win over Salzburg in December 2024 during the campaign’s group stage. He has given only 7 yellow cards to the French side and has never showed a red to them.
Meanwhile, the English has only been in charge of a Barcelona fixture for four times in the UEFA Champions League of which he has showed 4 yellow cards and no reds. His earliest game being in 2019 when Barcelona faced Slavia Praha which resulted in a goalless draw and the last being in January 2025 when Barcelona hosted Atalanta which came to another draw (2-2).
With both teams gearing up for what would be an intense clash of experience and excellence, Michael Oliver will be assisted by Australian, Jarred Gillet who will be in charge of VAR operations.
