This month’s all-English Champions League final between
Manchester City and Chelsea will be played in Porto, Portugal, a shift of one
of soccer’s showcase events to one of the few countries where Britons can
travel without restrictions related to the coronavirus pandemic.
European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, cleared the last
hurdles to shifting the game from its scheduled site in Turkey on Wednesday. It
confirmed the move on Thursday.
The decision to move the final from Istanbul, which recently
re-entered a virus-related lockdown, came after discussions between European
soccer leaders and British government officials, who had been seeking to bring
the game to London. When the sides failed to reach an agreement that would have
allowed the teams and their domestic fans to avoid international travel,
Portugal was chosen as the site of the game for the second year in a row.
The #UCLfinal between Manchester City and Chelsea will now be held at the Estádio do Dragão in Porto.
— UEFA (@UEFA) May 13, 2021
6,000 fans of each team will be able to attend.
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The final, which will be played May 29 at the Estádio Dragão
in the coastal city of Porto, is the biggest day on the European club soccer
calendar. It had been scheduled to be played at the Ataturk Olympic Stadium in
Istanbul, but that would have ruled out attendance for most British fans of the
finalists, since Turkey is on a so-called red list of countries to which travel
is discouraged.
Holding the game in Turkey also raised the prospect that
players and officials from both teams would have to quarantine for as long as
10 days upon their return to England. That would have complicated the
preparations of a handful of national teams for this summer’s European
Championship, which begins June 11.
The game will be played with Estádio Dragão’s capacity of
about 50,000 reduced to less than half that figure. City and Chelsea are
expected to receive 6,000 tickets for their fans, figures that mirrored the
allotments in Turkey.
Europe’s governing body, UEFA, and British officials began
holding direct talks on Monday, three days after the British government placed
Turkey on its red list of countries, destinations where all but essential
travel is prohibited.
The British government said it was open to holding the match
at Wembley Stadium in London, and even was prepared to agree to allow thousands
of fans to attend, but they acknowledged that UEFA, as the tournament
organizer, would have the final say. UEFA provided a list of key requirements,
mainly around exemptions to quarantine rules for visitors.
UEFA’s demands created a problem for British officials,
though, since they had to balance the popular appeal of bringing a major
sporting event featuring two English teams to the country against continuing
concerns about public health amid a spreading virus. When the government balked
at UEFA’s request that it waive quarantine requirements so UEFA’s staff members
— as well as international broadcasters, sponsors, suppliers and officials —
could attend the game without an isolation period, the prospect of a London
final was dead.
In Portugal, the European soccer body has found a familiar
savior to get it out of a crisis. The country — and Lisbon in particular — rode
to the rescue last year when the Champions League’s final stages, including a
final also set for Istanbul, had to be reorganized because of the outbreak of
the pandemic.
The tournament, suspended on the eve of the quarterfinals,
was completed with a knockout format and in a so-called bubble environment in
Lisbon. Turkish officials had agreed to surrender their role as host of the
final in exchange for a promise that Istanbul would host the final this year.
Discussions about a move were completed quickly. Last
Friday, after City and Chelsea had confirmed the all-English final and as talk
swirled about a change of venue, Tiago Craveiro, the chief executive of the
Portuguese soccer federation, reached out to UEFA. Officials at the soccer body
were then reeling from that day’s sudden announcement that travelers from
Britain faced severe restrictions for any travel to Turkey. That created a
crisis that went well beyond questions about fan access.
Players on both sides faced the prospect of having to
isolate for 10 days upon their return to Britain, creating doubts over their
participation in the European Championship, the national team competition
organized by UEFA that is second in size and importance only to the FIFA World
Cup.
With Portugal on Britain’s green list — and thus subject to
far less stringent travel rules — Craveiro offered to organize the final at
short notice. Porto was picked because it did not get an opportunity to stage
Champions League games last year when the event was confined in its Lisbon
bubble.
Sympathetic that Istanbul is losing out for the second
straight year, UEFA officials are considering offering Turkish officials the
Champions League final in 2023, to coincide with the centenary of the Turkish
republic.
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