What You Need to Know About PSG vs. Bayern in the Champions League Final

Isn’t this game usually played in the spring?

Yes. But like so many things this year, the coronavirus pandemic changed that.

The Champions League final was originally scheduled for May 30 in Istanbul, but when the tournament ground to a halt in March, halfway through the round of 16, tournament organizers had to draw up a new plan. After some intense lobbying, Turkey was out (Istanbul will get next year’s final) and Portugal was in. Two weeks in Lisbon would decide the biggest prize in European soccer.

In fact, as Tariq Panja and Rory Smith of The Times reported earlier this month, the entire format was scrapped and reshaped to suit new needs: isolation, testing, speed and — perhaps most of all — TV. There were rules about where to stay and how many bottles of water would be provided and even where players could warm up, and where they absolutely, definitely could not.

“The entire knockout round, in fact, is an abrupt break from history,” Tariq and Rory wrote, “and not one UEFA — the competition’s organizer, and European soccer’s governing body — is eager to repeat.”

Instead of months of travel and matches, the eight quarterfinalists gathered in Lisbon for two weeks of knockout games. Four clubs went home within days, and while UEFA seemed to have a policy in place for any possibility — including positive tests — it appears to have navigated the schedule without incident.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/22/sports/soccer/psg-bayern-final.html