Monaco (AP) – Lucky Manchester City, Tottenham, Juventus, Monaco – One of them will have to travel north of the Arctic to play a Champions League match in mid-January.
All four were portrayed as Norwegian Champion Bodeau/Grimt opponents on Thursday.
And the Real Madrid superstar team is heading far east than the Champions League to play for Kazakshtan’s Kairat Almati near the border with China.
This is a flight of approximately 6,420 km (4,000 miles) across three time zones from the Spanish capital.
Thursday’s draw combined only teams and opponents, but did not determine the date for the game, so it’s still unclear which teams will make those trips mid-winter.
Almaty temperature, once a city Bids to host the Winter Olympicsit can drop to minus 20C (minus 4F) in January.
Visitors to Bodo/Glimt can expect to be soaked in a relative heat of minus 7 C (19 F) in January. That’s what I met Maccabi Tel Aviv in a Europa League match seven months ago. Israeli visitors lost 3-1 on Bodeau/Grimt’s heated artificial turf.
New challenges
Bodo/Glimt and Almaty are both Champions League rookies, and their location presents additional challenges after the competition schedule was changed to include the January game from last season. Though the weather could prove challenging in other months.
The 40,000 people living in the coastal Bobo can accumulate heavy snow in April. It’s the same as when Lazio visited in the quarterfinals of the Europa League when he lost overnight 10cm (4 inches).
“So Lazio was saying, ‘How do you play this game?'” Bodeau/Grimt Chairman Inge Henning Andersen said Thursday ahead of the Champions League draw. “Shuffle the snow. The heat is on. There’s no need to adjust what you play with the Bodo.”
If snow is forced to postpone the game, the team will need to try again the next afternoon, Bodeau officials said.
Tottenham had already visited Bodeau for the Europa League semi-finals last season, but that was in May.
Long distance soccer
Regardless of the time, in this Champions League version, some teams have extreme long distance flights.
As a record 15-time European champion, Madrid will have to play Kairat in Central Asia with Club Bruges, Olympiacos and Cyprus rookie Paphos.
“That doesn’t matter, it’s football,” said Askar Yesimov, Kairat’s general director.
However, Kairat players and fans will make four return trips of not just one like their opponents. They spent 11 hours of flight time last week against Glasgow’s Celtic in the qualifying playoffs, Yessimov said.
The Kazakh champion was attracted in the away games in Inter Milan, Arsenal, Copenhagen and the most distant of all Lisbon.
Almati to Lisbon is about 7,000 kilometers (4,350 miles) and should set a record for European marquee competitions.
The Kazakhstani team has become a member of UEFA and has only played in European competitions since 2002, when Astana played in the 2015-16 Champions League. The former Soviet Republic first joined the Asian Football Union in 1994.
Azerbaijan is also represented by this Champions League and has Karabagh by playing home games in Baku. Around 4,000 km (2,500 miles) from London for Chelsea, flights from Eintro Hat Frankfurt, Ajax and Copenhagen are slightly shorter.
Qarabag players and fans have made a long trip to Liverpool in Lisbon, for a long trip to West.
Western Europe dominates
The demand for travel reflects that the Champions League is currently a very Western European event, focusing on the wealthiest clubs in the wealthiest league.
With no teams from Ukraine, Croatia or Serbia among the 36 clubs this season in the league phase, the only team in the former Iron Curtain country is Slavia Prague. Last season, Eastern European teams never made it into the 24-team knockout phase.
___
AP Soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
