Celtic v Roma – UEFA Confirm Match Officials for Europa League match

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The Celtic Star

·9 December 2025

Celtic v Roma – UEFA Confirm Match Officials for Europa League match

UEFA has posted details of the match officials who will handle the Celtic v Roma Europa League match at Celtic Park this Thursday evening…

This will be new manager Wilfried Nancy’s second match in charge of the Scottish Champions, following his debut against Hearts at Celtic Park on Sunday afternoon. It will also be Nancy’s first ever experience of participating in UEFA European football competition and the Frenchman will be looking for his first win as Celtic manager following the disappointing 2-1 defeat to Derek McInnes’ side.

The match officials with the exception of the Assistant Video Referee (who is French) are all from Romania, as per the update on UEFA.com.

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The match referee for the Celtic v Roma match will be István Kovács and he will be assisted by fellow countrymen Mihai Marica and Ferencz Tunyogi. The Fourth official will be Szabolcs Kovacs while the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) will be Cătălin Popa and the Assistant VAR will be Jérôme Brisard from France.

István Kovács has been in charge of one previous game at Celtic Park, that dreadful 4-1 defeat to Sparta Prague in the Covid season, so he’ll see a very different Paradise with the fans in attendance this time. Kovács also handled the recent Liverpool v Real Madrid in the Champions League.

Ideally the infighting between the club and the supporters can be put aside for now so that we can concentrate on backing the team, the new manager and building on our improved position in the Europa League thanks to that fantastic victory in Rotterdam against Feyenoord achieved under Martin O’Neill.

Roma fans at Ibrox. theRangers v Roma. Europa League, 6 November 2025. Photo Vagelis Georgariou

Roma have been in Glasgow already in their Europa League campaign, securing a 2-0 victory over theRangers at Ibrox. Hopefully Celtic can destroy any of their dreams of a Glasgow double. Celtic will move onto the points if Wilfried Nancy gets his first win. Roma currently have nine points to Celtic would leapfrog them in the standings with a win.

After this week’s game against Roma, Celtic has two matches to play in the Europa League, both at the end of January 2026, starting with a trip to Italy to take on Bologna FC 1909 on Thursday 22 January before finishing the group campaign a week later against FC Utrecht on Thursday 29 January.

Celtic Unveil new manager Wilfried Nancy at Lennoxtown Training Centre on December 05, 2025. (Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)

Realistically Celtic will need four points from these three matches to make it through to the play-offs. Nine points from these three games could actually see Celtic avoid the playoffs all together and qualify for the last eight directly. That would be wonderful but making the play-offs should be the initial target and that means essentially taking something from this next match under the lights at Paradise.

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