Alberto Undiano Mallenco of Spain will referee our vital Champions League home game against Olympique Lyonnais of France on Tuesday night.

The 36-year old from Pamplona made his Spanish La Liga debut back in September 2000 as Club Deportivo Numancia de Soria beat Real Oviedo 1-0 and has since gone on to referee over 150 games in the top flight of Spanish football. In 2008 he refereed the Copa Del Rey Final as Valencia beat Getafe 3-1.

Tuesday's game will be his first Champions League game this season, although he did referee Olympiacos's 1-0 win against Sheriff Tiraspol in the qualifiers back in August. Last season he refereed four games in total including Chelsea's 2-2 draw at Juventus in the knock-out stages. This will be his seventh Champions League game proper of his career.

Alberto is on the FIFA short-list for the World Cup next season in South Africa, the only Spanish representative on the list. He has already refereed 3 World Cup qualifiers including England's 5-1 hammering of Croatia last month.

He has recently returned from refereeing in Egypt in the U20 World Cup tournament, where he managed to officiate in three games, his last one being the Semi-final between Brazil and Costa Rica, a game in which he cautioned a total of ten players.
Although he has never refereed ourselves or Lyon yet, he refereed Everton in their 2-0 away win at 1. FC Nürnberg in the UEFA Cup two years ago.

Mallenco speaks fluent English and his style of refereeing has been likened to an English one and he averages 7 cards per game, which is quite normal for La Liga.

As normal all the officials are from the same country with Fermin Martinez Ibanez and Juan Carlos Yuste Jiminez as his assistants and Jose Luis Paradas Moreno as the fourth official.

Some memorably matches involving Liverpool and Spanish officials.
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 before 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 Haka.
27th February 2003 (A.J.L. Nieto) - Djibril Cissé 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) - Bišcan sees red in a 2-1 defeat at Olympique de 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.
1st May 2007 (M.E.M. Gonzalez) - We are on our way to Athens as we beat Chelsea 4-1 on pens after Daniel Agger cancelled out the one goal deficit from the first leg.
14th April 2009 (L.M. Cantalejo) - Chelsea knock us out for the second successive season after a 4-4 draw at Stamford Bridge.