Aleksei Kulbakov

Who is Aleksei Kulbakov?

Alexey Kulbakov is a Belarusian football referee, FIFA-licenced and UEFA first group referee. He is the only Belarusian official who regularly takes part in the group stages of UEFA club competitions.

Kulbakov started his refereeing career very early - at the age of 16. He went through all Belarusian divisions quite quickly and has officiated his first top league match in Belarus in 2003 when he was only 23. It happened quite often those times that Kulbakov was the youngest man on the pitch. Alexey became a FIFA-licensed referee just two years later, in 2005, at the age of 25.

His debut in international A-team level took place 12 September 2007 when Cyprus won 3-0 against San-Marino in EURO 2008 qualifier. In 2008 he was selected as one of the 19 participants of the UEFA Talents and Mentors program for perspective European referees. During next two years in the framework of this program Alexey officiated all his UEFA matches under supervision of the same referee observer Andreas Schluchter from Switzerland. Starting from the season 2009/2010 Kulbakov regularly officiates matches in the UEFA Europa League group stage.