Champions League: The curious fact that small teams appreciate the pandemic

The stoppage due to the pandemic, the disputed matches behind closed doors and the five permitted changes changed the course of football and challenged those patterns that seemed to never change in the history of football. There is no history of a situation like this. Although football has that magical tinge that makes it unpredictable, where the smallest can beat the biggest, and no match is resolved before entering the stadium, the big teams are always favorites over the little ones, and that happens since the beginnings of the sport.

The Champions League as such, makes this trend clear. Like everything in life, there are exceptions, and we always get some surprise that teams from which nobody expected anything, appear in final instances, but in general it is usually the same teams that dominate the continent throughout the years. However, these last two editions brought unexpected results, and one of them is due to the fact that since there is no public in the stands, that custom of asserting the home has been lost, as there are more victories for visiting teams than local.

This strange trend began to originate with the return of football after the pandemic, when it was arranged that the remainder of the 2019-2020 edition would be fully developed in Lisbon, matching everyone in conditions. However, as the months went by, this equality of conditions intensified, because, by not having the pressure of the public on the other side, that feeling of being a visitor is left aside.

So much so, that having finished the first round of the round of 16 of the current edition, we find ourselves with an incredible 1-7, where in a single match the local prevailed, and in the rest it was the visitor who celebrated later of the 90 minutes. The only one that failed before this logic was Juventus, who could not be strong against Porto, and fell by 2 to 1. Will this anomaly continue in the second leg?

The Wanda Metropolitano: A state of a mordern stadium that functions as a vaccination center

Atlético de Madrid had everything to receive Chelsea in its field, the Wanda Metropolitano, however the pandemic changed everything and now, from being a Champions League stadium, it has become a vaccination center for thousands of Spanish people. That is why, he could not play on his court, and had to travel to the National Arena, an emblematic stadium in the city of Bucharest in Romania, to play his game against Chelsea, in which it lost 1-0 with goal by Olivier Giroud.