UEFA has made its choice for Romania Poland, and it has gone with a familiar name. Sebastian Gishamer will be in the middle at 21:45 on the Arena Națională in București, and that is not a random appointment. It is the fourth time UEFA has sent the 38-year-old Austrian to a match in Romania, which says plenty about the level of trust he has built up.
In a high-profile international fixture, refereeing assignments matter more than people like to admit. Officials are supposed to disappear into the background. Yet when a match carries this much weight, the man with the whistle is part of the story whether anyone likes it or not. Gishamer is not a newcomer being thrown into the fire. He is an experienced FIFA referee, placed on the list in 2019, and one who has already handled several games with Romanian involvement.
A referee Romania know well enough
Gishamer’s record in this part of the world is already substantial. He first took charge of a national-team international in 2020, when Slovenia beat San Marino 4-0, and he has since been repeatedly delegated to Romania by UEFA. The list is tidy and very telling: Olimpija Ljubjana – Sepsi OSK Sf. Gheorghe in July 2022, FCSB – Anderlecht 0-0 in Bucharest in September 2022, HJK Helsinki – Farul Constanța 2-0 in August 2024, FCSB – Olympiacos 0-0 in Bucharest in November 2024, and CFR Cluj – Hacken 1-0 in August 2025.
That is not the itinerary of a referee being tested for the first time. It is the record of someone UEFA clearly believes can handle pressure, unfamiliar atmospheres and the awkward rhythms of European football. Romania Poland now becomes the latest exam. And at a stadium like the Arena Națională, with the expectations and noise that come with it, it is easy to see why UEFA has gone for a referee it already knows.
Gishamer’s background also makes him a slightly unusual figure in elite refereeing. He works alongside his officiating career as an engineer and as an operator of an architecture and planning company. That does not change the job he has to do on match night, but it does underline that this is not a man whose football identity exists in isolation. He has built a serious profession around refereeing, and UEFA have rewarded that consistency.
The Austrian crew behind him
The appointment is also fully Austrian in composition. Roland Riedel and Santino Schreiner will run the lines, Walter Altmann is the fourth official, and Manuel Schuttengruber and Josef Spurny are on VAR duty. In other words, this is not just a referee appointment but a complete officiating unit that UEFA has chosen to trust together.
Gishamer is now 38 years old, born on 13 October 1988, and at this point his resume is no longer one that needs explanation. He became a referee in 2004, reached Austria’s first league in 2016, and moved onto the FIFA list three years later. That progression is exactly why this appointment makes sense. It is not dramatic in the noisy, conspiratorial sense some fans love to invent. It is simply the kind of measured UEFA decision that suggests experience still counts.
For Romania Poland, that is the reality. The headline is the match itself, but the assignment is part of the frame. Sebastian Gishamer is back in Romania again, this time for one of the night’s most watched fixtures, and UEFA has made its message clear: if the game is big, they want a referee they already trust.
