Lausanne (AFP)

Revolutionary: suspended due to the coronavirus and completely turned upside down, the Champions League should end in August with an unprecedented final tournament of eight teams, the contours of which UEFA will announce on Wednesday after its Executive Committee.

Forget the sacrosanct round-trip matches and the advantage of the away goal: the 2019-2020 edition of the C1 will certainly be deprived of these "remontadas" which wrote its recent legend but it should offer a spectacle condensed and colorful to an audience weaned from football for months.

Meeting between 12 noon and 3 p.m., the UEFA Executive Committee will then let its president Aleksander Ceferin speak to the press by teleconference (around 3.30 p.m.).

The leader should reveal the details of a final tournament which, according to sources familiar with the matter, is to be played in Lisbon, with a final scheduled for August 23 at the Luz stadium, lair of Benfica, and no longer in Istanbul as initially. planned. The Turkish city should have hosted this meeting on May 30.

The eight-team tournament is expected to start around August 12 with the quarterfinals. The meetings should be divided between the Alvalade stadium, where Sporting takes place, and the Luz stadium, according to a close source.

The semi-finals would be scheduled on August 18 and 19 and the final on August 23.

- Public presence not excluded -

Four teams have already qualified for the quarter-finals: Paris-SG, RB Leipzig, Atalanta Bergamo and Atlético Madrid.

It remains to program the four 8th finals still to be played, in particular the return match between Juventus and Lyon, the French having imposed 1 to 0 the first leg. The meeting will take place in Turin in early August, told AFP a source familiar with the matter.

In the other three duels, Bayern Munich dominated Chelsea in the first leg (3-0), Manchester City took over from Real Madrid (2-1) and Barcelona and Naples are tied (1-1).

According to a close source, UEFA does not entirely rule out the idea of ​​welcoming spectators for this final phase, even if the decision will depend on the development of the health situation.

If Portugal's candidacy was quickly accepted by UEFA, it was because of the Federation's good relations with the body and because the country was little affected by the Covid-19 and was one of the first to relaunch its championship, explain sources close to the matter.

The President of the Portuguese Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, was optimistic from the start of June, anticipating "good news" for football and for Portugal.

- The Europa League in Germany? -

The format must be identical for the Europa League, which should conclude with a final tournament for eight teams, probably in Germany. The final was originally scheduled for May 27 in Poland, Gdansk.

Only six of the first leg matches in the round of 16 were disputed, some of them behind closed doors, before the suspension of competition on March 14. Three German clubs remain in the race, as well as two Spanish, two Italian and two English.

The UEFA executive is also set to announce the final format for the Women's Champions League and the rescheduling of the Nations' matches on Wednesday.

But above all, it must reveal the final list of host cities for the next Euro, postponed by one year to the summer of 2021.

The European Nations Championship is now scheduled from June 11 to July 11, 2021, with a kickoff in Rome, Italy, one of the countries hardest hit by the Covid-19.

But this new programming seems to pose some problems for certain host cities.

Originally scheduled for 27 May, the UEFA "comex" meeting has been postponed to 17 June due to "still open" questions concerning "a small number" of Euro host cities from football. They must in principle be twelve in number, distributed in twelve countries.

The meeting, which was to be held over a single day, will continue on Thursday (9:00 am to 11:00 am), due to a "very busy" agenda with expected decisions, notably on financial fair play.

© 2020 AFP