PZPN

On the reaction to the appointment of referees for the World Cup final:

We remained among the sixteen best referees in the world. Of course, I will not hide the fact that we expected that we could get into this narrow group. There were the most experienced referees and my team. We are young, but we didn't get too excited. We have kept our feet on the ground. We were aware that we were very close. The excitement hit when we sat in the room with Pierluigi Collina, who had a printed sheet with the referees for the World Cup final. The room was filled with the best referees in the world, and our names were just read out. It's an amazing feeling. I first hugged Paweł Sokolnicki and then Tomasz Listkiewicz. They were both emotional but they held out until the end. It's even hard for me to describe in words how huge the emotions were for us. We will certainly remember them for a long time.

On when they found out about the appointment:

As a rule, the referee appointments are presented 48 hours before the match, but this time an exception was made. We found out 72 hours before the final meeting. Pierluigi Collina is a very experienced referee and he knew exactly what he was doing. He wanted us to enjoy the moment, wait for the reactions of those closest to us and receive congratulations. After that, we could focus only on the final match. I even got advice from one of my fellow referees to just turn off my phone and not read the news anymore. In these moments, there is a great deal of mental noise, and then there is the stress. I keep both my feet on the ground, but at that moment the adrenaline level was very high. I would even say that we didn't sleep too well before the final match.

On whether he expected his team to be nominated to referee at the World Cup final:

We were among the candidates for the final from the very beginning. You know about these things immediately after training on the field. We took part in training with the players, and on top of that there was VAR. We knew what configurations and rotations we were in, so we just felt it. After Argentina's match against Australia, we wanted to keep our cool, but I knew something might be up. Then we had the second match in the group and we were among the sixteen best referees in the world. At first there was talk that we might get a quarter-final match, and if not that stage, there would be four other matches. The match for third place wasn't for us, because it was a game for someone young or a referee from the host country. Nevertheless, it has to be said that the Qatari referee did very well and made the right decisions. My colleagues and I watched him and we were positively surprised because he did a solid job.

On preparations for the final match:

We had a tactical preparation for this match and also a meeting with the analyst. Of course, we took a draw scenario into account and wanted to position ourselves differently already at a certain stage of the match so that we wouldn't lose strength. You never know what will happen and how much strength it will take to referee at the highest level.

On concentration:

I felt that extra time was coming and managed to keep my concentration at the highest level. I'm rarely that focused, because sometimes you can't maintain that level for the full 90 minutes. I knew from the start that there would be no banter with the players, I just expected a heated game. We needed to reach the peak of our abilities. Argentina dominated before the penalty shootout and I thought the match was going nicely. Neither of the teams parked the bus and there was none of the so-called football chess, as is sometimes the case, and we watched great, spectacular football.