One of Spain's top officials Manuel Enrique Mejuto Gonzalez will take charge of our final Champions League Semi-Final 2nd leg clash agaisnt Chelsea at Anfield on Tuesday.

This will be the first time he has refereed a Liverpool game since that game in Istanbul. It will be his second visit to Anfield, the last time was a very similar situation to this. We faced Olympiacos in the last group game knowing what result was needed to progress, a late Steven Gerrard goal gave the result we needed.

Gonzalez also refereed Liverpool away from Anfield, a Michael Owen goal gave us a slender one goal lead in a UEFA Cup 3rd round 1st leg clash in Holland against Vitesse Arnhem in November 2002.

He also been in charge of 3 Chelsea games. Back in March 2004 he was in the middle of their 1-1 home draw against Arsenal in the 1st leg of the Champions League quarter-final. Then three years ago, he refereed Chelsea twice in one season, a 3-0 away win at PSG in a group match and a 3-2 2nd leg quarter-final defeat at Bayern Munich, but the blues went through 6-5 on aggregate.

Manuel has nearly 30 Champions League games to his name, and this will be his sixth game of this season's tournament.

He was Spain's representative during the European Championship in Portugal and took charge of two games during the tournament. His first game a goalless draw with Denmark and Italy, then five days later he was in the middle of one of the better games from the group stages - Czech Republic's 3-2 win over Holland thanks to two late goals from Milan Baros and Vladimir Smicer.

He has been refereeing in La Liga since he made his debut match in September 1999 in a 0-0 draw between Valladolid and Compostela.

An account manager by day, he got his first major UEFA call-up in 2001 when he was appointed to the World Youth
Championships in Argentina were he was given the Final between the hosts and Ghana.

In May 2004 he was given the great honour of refereeing the FIFA Centennial match between France and Brazil

He was also the referee for the all London Champions League quarter-final 1st leg clash between Chelsea and Arsenal at Stamford Bridge last season.

He has now been refereeing for 30 years since getting the ‘bug' back in college when his physical education teacher organised a refereeing course as he had no referees for his matches.

As usual all his fellow officials are from Spain, his assistants are Juan Carlos Yuste Jimenez and Jesus Calvo Guadamuro, with Alberto Undiano Mallenco as the fourth official.

Some memorable matches involving Spanish referees and Liverpool.

22nd Feb 2001 (J.M.G. Encinar) - Roma win 1-0 at Anfield but we progress to the quarter-finals of the UEFA Cup 2-1 on aggregate but not after Encinar appeared to change his mind and award Roma a corner instead of a penalty.

8th August 2001 (A.D. Ibanez) - Our first Champions League game, albeit a qualifier sees a Michael Owen hat-trick in a 5-0 win at FC Haka.

27th February 2003 (A.J.L. Nieto) - Djibril Cisse gets a first taste of Anfield but his Auxerre team go away empty handed after Owen and Murphy give us a 2-0 win in the UEFA Cup.

25th March 2004 (A.D. Ibanez) - Biscan sees red in a 2-1 defeat at Marseille despite an early lead through Emile Heskey.

25th May 2005 (M.E.M. Gonzalez) - Ataturk Stadium, Istanbul - need we say more.

27th September 2006 (L.M. Cantalejo) - Peter Crouch scores one of the goals of the tournament as we beat Galatasaray 3-2 at Anfield.