Tonight’s lip-smacking Champion’s League final between Paris St-Germain F.C. and FC Bayern Munich. It’s an unmissable match as Bayern M. who are called as a ‘well-oiled machine’ will face a PSG side with individual stellar stars like, Kylian Mbappe, Neymar and Angel di Maria to name a few.
A word of Praise
Every year there’s the UEFA Champion League played amongst the football clubs. League type of format is when all teams play against each other. Champion’s League comprises of the top three or four teams of a country in that continent. And every country’s elite football division’s topmost go to fight in this league (and this is true for any kind of sport). Then there is the Europa league to which the fourth, fifth and maybe sixth topmost teams of every country play. We got to know this year’s Europa League winner on Friday night – Sevilla FC from Spain winning it. They won it for the sixth time making few comment on them mathematically coming fourth (5th or 6th) in Spain so that they can dominate Europe via the Europa League.
Hypothetical musings aside, this year the World fell prey to a virus and all life came to a standstill. And yet, in June the continuation of the UEFA tournaments were announced. A 31-page ‘return-to-play’ dossier was to be adhered to by all the playing clubs. The format of the tournaments too was changed. This year unlike other years the eight quarter-finalists would play a knock-out tournament instead of the tradition league system. All teams in the league format played against each other at Home and Away. Yes, the two teams playing each other would invite their opponent to their Home stadium and vice-versa. This year’s CL final was scheduled to take place in Istanbul while the EL final in Poland – note that the final match is always a knock-out with no Home/Away bias. An interesting twist for fans, who are not allowed the attend the sporting event, since it would take place behind closed doors. What’s the twist; one may ask. It’s the stadium atmosphere where the Home team’s fans can form a 12th man with their noise and dissuade the Away team. Imagine you live in Milan, Italy and the streets are empty, why? Coz, the two rival teams AC Milan and Inter Milan are playing each other. Wow! what an electric atmosphere. By the way Inter Milan FC was the runner-up in Europa League. And that is the difference this year – a single do-or-die match format to be played out in Portugal.
Why Portugal? The people of Portugal had correctly feared for their own lives bringing the Virus spread to meager numbers compared to their neighbouring countries. Spain’s Madrid the home to Real Madrid CF and Athletico Madrid FC vied
for the tournament to be held in its arenas – both FCs having separate
Home stadiums. Yet lost out to Portugal and Germany – Germany hosted the
Europa League in Cologne. Portugal has category4 class environment to host such an event – as per UEFA. A point to be noted how, UEFA maintains documentation on the basis of hotels, transportation other than only pitch quality and number of stadiums and the included facilities in a given region.
And in three months, with unprecedented levels of solidarity, collaboration and coordination between UEFA, the national associations, the clubs and the other stakeholders today’s tournament ending match is a lesson to the people who ignore Sports. So here’s praise to a sport where, twenty-two men run behind a ball has shown how teamwork can bridge multi-racial, multi-lingual and multi-cultural differences.
Cheers
;-p