UEFA Champions League Will Return in August in Portugal

UEFA, like many other soccer competitions, faced the financially devastating prospect of paying punishing rebates to its broadcast partners if it did not find a way to resume, and declaring the competition over always seemed an unlikely option. Its president, Ceferin, had insisted from the earliest days of the soccer stoppage that all efforts would be made to complete the club competitions that had begun. To do so, UEFA gave national leagues a deadline of the first week in August to finish their own incomplete championships.

Most countries have found a way. Germany’s top division, the Bundesliga, became the first of Europe’s top leagues to return when it took the field in May, and it is on track to finish its season before the end of June. Leagues in Spain, Italy and England have resumed in the past week, and also are scheduled to end well before the Champions League reaches its conclusion. That will make the Champions League final in Lisbon — coming 14 months after the event’s first preliminary-round games — the bookend to one of the strangest European soccer seasons in history.

The Champions League had been set to finish with a showcase final in Istanbul on May 30. Now it is more likely to end in empty stadiums — the Estádio José Alvalade, home to Sporting Club, and Benfica’s Estádio da Luz — with strict hygiene protocols and teams sequestered in bio-secure hotels across Lisbon. (There is, however, hope that some fans could be allowed to enter the stadiums if the authorities lift restrictions by August.)

UEFA, which completed the proposed changes to the competition during a meeting of its executive committee held by video conference, has agreed to host next season’s final in Istanbul instead. Next year’s final, awarded to St. Petersburg, Russia, will now take place there in 2022.

By playing the competition in one location, UEFA will inadvertently spotlight a format FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, has developed for a new quadrennial version of its Club World Cup. FIFA has been forced to reschedule the first edition of the event — which had been fiercely resisted by UEFA — because of the coronavirus. It had been set to be played in China next summer, but those dates are now unavailable because of scheduling clashes with the rearranged European and South American national team championships.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/17/sports/soccer/champions-league-lisbon-portugal.html