The Champions League is once again under threat from coronavirus. Suspended in mid-March and then rescheduled from 12 to 23 August in Portugal, the flagship event of European football is being overtaken by the health crisis with the restructuring measures taken in Lisbon, even if UEFA dismisses any "plan B". "We hope everything will be fine and that it will be possible to organize the tournament in Portugal. For the moment, there is no reason to plan a plan B", assured a UEFA spokesman on Tuesday .
700,000 residents confined for at least two weeks
Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa, who spoke with UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin on Tuesday evening, has also been calming: "All steps are being taken to ensure that we host this tournament in a healthy manner and secure. " However, the provisions that came into force on Wednesday do not encourage optimism. Residents of 19 neighborhoods in the northern suburbs of Lisbon, where outbreaks of Covid-19 contagion persist, are once again confined to their homes. In total, some 700,000 inhabitants are re-confined for at least two weeks.
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Portuguese Prime Minister reassured
With an average of 321 new infections per day, the number of new cases reported in Portugal increased by a third in June compared to May. The new cases remain largely concentrated in the Lisbon region, where the tournament is to take place. But Antonio Costa wants to be reassuring: the reconfiguration of certain districts of the northern suburbs of Lisbon "has no connection with the center of Lisbon, where the Champions League will be held," he explained in an interview to Catalan newspaper La Vanguardia.
In a completely new format, the epilogue of the Champions League will be played on single knockout matches in one and the same city. The event must begin on August 12 with the quarter-finals and the matches will be divided between the Alvalade stadium, where Sporting is played, and the Luz stadium, lair of Benfica. The final is scheduled for August 23 at the Luz stadium. Four teams have already qualified for the quarter-finals: PSG, RB Leipzig, Atalanta Bergamo and Atlético Madrid.
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The matches behind closed doors?
Before that, the remaining four knockout stages, including the Juventus-Lyon second leg, will be played on August 7 and 8. It remains to be determined whether these matches will take place in the stadiums of the teams involved or in Portugal (Lisbon, Porto and Guimaraes). If UEFA could still harbor a slim hope of welcoming the public to the stadiums two weeks ago, this scenario now seems very unlikely. "With regard to the question of the public, faced with the current pandemic situation, it is obviously not," said Secretary of State for Health Antonio Lacerda Sales on Monday. "We do not know how the pandemic will evolve and we will continue to take the proportional measures according to this evolution. We cannot anticipate the future, but at this stage of course not," he added. It also remains to be seen whether, under these conditions, the eight qualified teams will take the risk of moving to Lisbon.