Despite UEFA insisting on Tuesday that it does not have “a plan B” regarding Lisbon as the venue for the finals, Champios is again threatened by the coronavirus. Not surprisingly since this Wednesday, 19 districts of northern Lisbon, where outbreaks of contagion persist, in total 700,000 people, are again confined.
“We hope that everything is fine and that it is possible to organize the tournament in Portugal. At the moment, there is no reason to plan a plan B, “a UEFA spokesman said Tuesday. Portugal Prime Minister Antonio Costa, who spoke with UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin on Tuesday night, stated: “All steps are being taken to ensure that this tournament is organized in a healthy and safe manner.”
With an average of 321 new infections per day, the number of new cases in Portugal increased by a third in June compared to May. The new cases are still largely concentrated in the Lisbon region, which will host the eight final of the Champions League from August 12 to 23. The tournament was discontinued in March.
But Antonio Costa wants to be reassuring: the reconfiguration of certain districts in the northern suburbs of Lisbon “has nothing to do with the center of Lisbon, where the Champions League will take place,” he explained in an interview for the newspaper La Vanguardia. “It is not in Lisbon, but in neighboring areas,” he insisted.
However, among the 19 districts affected by the confinement, there is a district in the municipality of Lisbon, that of Santa Clara, a neighbor of the Lumiar district, where the Sporting de Portugal stadium, Alvalade, is located, one of the two stadiums in the that the Champions League must be played. The other, Da Luz, from Benfica. If UEFA was hopeful that there could be an audience in the stadiums, this scenario appears as very improbable. In fact, Antonio Lacerda Sales, Secretary of State for Health, said that “as for the public, in the current health situation, obviously not.”
It remains to be seen if the 8 classified teams will risk traveling to Lisbon. Paris Saint-Germain (PSG), Atlético, Atalanta and Leipzig have already qualified for this final to eight. The last four round of 16 second leg matches that have yet to be played and the other four participants will be Barcelona-Naples, Manchester City-Real Madrid, Bayern-Chelsea and Juventus-Lyon. They will be played on August 7 and 8, either in the originally scheduled stadiums or in Portugal. In Portugal, between 300 and 400 new cases are occurring every day, while in May it was one hundred.