Covid and the 2021 Champions League Final
Porto, 2021
On the 4th May 2021 the team I had supported my whole life, Manchester City beat Paris Saint-German in the champions league semi-final. Due to covid restrictions I had given up hope on watching the final until UEFA announced the venue for the game had been moved to Porto, Portugal. Portugal having more relaxed covid rules than the original venue for the final, Istanbul. The change of venue gave fans the opportunity to go to the game. I threw an old point and shoot into my bag and my brother, my Dad and I went on a jolly to Portugal.
Since the 2008 take over of Manchester City by Sheikh Mansour, Europe’s premier trophy, the Champions League has been a main goal for the club. While success, history and drama had been made along the way, this is the first time we had made it to the Champions League final. The showpiece of the European season. We were going to play Chelsea and on paper I thought we were the better side. However with covid very much being an international problem, getting to the game was never going to be easy.
Tickets came and went and we had no luck. Due to the social distancing rules, the Estádio do Dragão was at reduced capacity and there was overwhelming demand for a potentially historic night from City fans. Getting tickets was hard.
By some minor miracle my Dad had found some tickets online and booked some last minute flights for us. I couldn’t wait. There were however some caveats attached:
We had no idea if the tickets were real
How were we going to get to Porto in a post Brexit, covidy world.
The following plan was as follows. Get up early on the morning of the 29th May for a flight to Lisbon via Amsterdam. Road trip from Lisbon to Porto. Check into the hotel, where my Dad had asked the seller to leave the tickets and then make our way to the game. Simple? No. The easy part was getting up in the morning. I was full of excitement, the chance to watch your football team in Europe is a great feeling. The mix of travel, culture and football is a great blend. Of course your enjoyment is contingent on your team winning. We flew through security at Manchester airport and we were on our way to Amsterdam. The next step was trying to negotiate a quick transit through Amsterdam as we didn’t have much time in our layover.
However when we touched down in Amsterdam the airport was packed. I was surprised to see so many people there with covid still dominating much of the news. The queues were massive for passport control. We were no longer allowed through the EU citizen part of the queue so we were thrown in with people who needed more attention to their visas and travel documents. Shit, shit, shit. This is just typical. As we were in the queue we were constantly reminded of our situation, the last call for Lisbon came and went and the queue wasn’t moving. I think I may have even looked for how long the drive would be from Amsterdam to Porto, we would’ve missed kick off.
Eventually we were rushed to the front of the line but that didn’t mean we were out of the woods. The passport officer had a very stern look on his face and enquired to the reason of my travel. I replied, ‘the Champions League final mate!’ I hoped my enthusiasm would translate. It didn’t. The officer then asked to see my ticket to the game. At this point I thought the dream was over. Luckily my Dad stepped in and said that they were at the hotel and we were going to pick them up. The officer reluctantly let us through. Welcome to post-Brexit European travel.
We made our flight and landed in Lisbon trouble free. I was only told off once and that was because I was wearing a buff as a face mask rather than a plastic one. After a quick change of face masks we were good to go. After spending some time figuring out how to pick up our rental car we headed South and we were cruising to Porto.
After being cooped up for so long during Covid, even leaving Lisbon airport looked cool and was exciting
My brother soaking up some of the continental sunshine
ROADTRIP!!! Heading South to Porto
One of Porto’s squares. A city full of character
The road trip went smoothly and after some tunes and discussions about formations and tactics, we were there. We checked into the hotel and Dad picked up the tickets. Not only were the tickets at the hotel, they looked real. Fingers crossed. After a quick freshen up we headed out for a bite. The atmosphere was strange in Porto as clearly people were still worried about covid and we were still supposed to wear face masks while out and about. We were in Porto to party but there was certainly an underlying feeling of uncertainty. The Man City fanzone was located down on the river. Porto is built on a steep hill and to get down to the river involved a decline and on the way we were treated to some of the local sights of Porto.
As we meandered down to the river, my anticipation for the game started to grow. There was a tangible buzz coming from the Man City fanzone and the enormity of the game was sinking in. One of the main reasons we had to visit the fanzone was because we needed to get a Covid safe wristband. I’m not exactly sure why we needed the wristbands as we had done lateral flows before leaving England but if it meant us getting to the game, I didn’t care.
In a coincidence I bumped into one of my old school friends, Luke, in the fanzone. It was nice to see him and we were both nervous for the game. Luke had managed to get his travel organised through the club so his journey sounded slightly less stressful than ours. We were still unsure if our tickets were going to work. it didn’t stop us enjoying the day though and if the tickets were fake, so be it.
As the day wore on, we sank a few beers at the fanzone and headed up to the ground on the bus. The atmosphere on the bus was electric as it was packed full of Man City fans. One or two locals who even looked to be enjoying themselves, maybe they thought we were crazy but they still had smiles on their faces. Chants rang throughout the bus journey with a lot of directed at our city rivals who throughout my life were the ones used to playing in these big games. Now it was our time. The feeling was great among our fans. We got to the stadium and managed to get a few beers in before the local shops were drunk dry.
My Dad and my brother soaking in the atmosphere on the streets of Porto
On approach to the fanzone
C’mon CITYYYYY!!
Seeing our club badge on the same banner as the Champions League final. It was hard not to get goosebumps
After having a few chats here and there with City fans around the ground, we headed to our seats. The main talking points around the team were the lack of a recognised holding midfielder as Gündoğan was in a position he was not familiar with and Sterling was in line for a start. Personally I was a big Sterling fan and happy to see him start but a lot of City fans had considered him out of form and should not be starting a game of this magnitude.
It was now time to face the music and answer a question that had been in the back of our minds since we left England. Are our tickets real? Was the main point of this trip going to be a waste? We walked up to the turnstiles and I thought this is it, is the dream going to die? I held the ticket up to the scanner. BUZZ. A green light showed and we were through. Get in. We were about to watch our team play in the Champions League final under some of the hardest circumstances I could have imagined.
When we got into the ground, the feeling was surreal. We had made it but this being the first time I had watched a game this season made things feel pretty weird. In the summer of 2020 we had brought a new premier centre-back called Rúben Dias. It was the first time seeing him in our colours with my own eyes despite him playing a massive part in our Premier League winning campaign.
After UEFA’s usual messing about pre-game we were finally ready to play. As soon as kick-off came we looked nervous. Bernardo Silva took kick-off but forgot that both teams had agreed to take the knee and my Dad summed it up the best, ‘I hope that’s the only nerves we show today.’ The first half was really cagey and honestly we never looked like scoring and things were made even worse when Kai Havertz took the ball round Ederson to make the score 1-0 to Chelsea. I had that sickening feeling that every football fan is accustom too. The mood at half time was flat.
The second half kicked off and it felt like as soon as the it begun, it ended. We had one chance toward the end and that was it. We had lost our final. I couldn’t wait to get as far away from the ground as possible. This one hurt a lot and I’ve still not watched the highlights back. I’m not planning on doing so anytime soon. Due to covid rules, there was a 11p.m curfew in Porto so even drowning our sorrows was hard. One off-licence owner had kept his store open to make a small killing from disgruntled City fans and we stocked up on beers, grabbed a burger and headed back to our hotel room. I wanted to be anywhere else on the planet at that moment and to get back into England we had to fill out our passenger locator forms. When filling out these completely unnecessary long forms we would hear the odd chant of ‘Chelseaaaaa’ go past our window, it was horrible.
When I woke the next morning, I was even flatter than I was the night before. Now the heartbreak of the game was complimented by a hangover. I couldn’t wait to get home. The road trip on the way back was quiet as we all tried to come to terms with what had happened. The journey was smooth until we boarded the plane to find out one of the passengers hadn’t filled out their passenger locator forms. After a 40-minute wait we were on the flight back to Manchester. Thankfully we didn’t have to go via Amsterdam this time and by 6p.m I was back in my local Wetherspoons, still trying to process what had happened in the previous 48 hours.