You touch on an interesting point about the treatment of locals. Not everyone in Portugal is happy that they are hosting the game, not least their own football fans who have had altercations with police. At a time when Portuguese fans are being told that they can only have 10% capacity in the grounds, their government will have a very hard time justifying an exception that allows 12,000 people to travel from another country, swan around on the piss for a few days and go to a game. They are elected officials after all.
I suppose you can't rule out a change in situation again but I think it's very likely that the bubble system will be the only way to see the game. I think that the situation we have now will be the situation on 29th May.
All interesting points and I get why the Portuguese people wouldn't be happy about this game taking place there when they've been subject to a protracted lockdown that's been as strict as ours in many ways. Add in the discontent amongst their domestic fans and the incident with the Sporting Lisbon fans the other night and it is indeed a difficult sell. However, this should've all been communicated to us fans during the discussions around holding the game there and it should've been clearly spelt out before any official announcement (or at least at the time of the announcement at the absolute latest) that if the game is to be held in Porto that all fans travelling in for the game will have to do so on official day trips and they'd have to stay in secure bubbles for the duration of their stay. Yet none of that has been mentioned in any of the numerous leaks to the press this week before the official announcement yesterday.
Yes, completely agree, the communication has been shocking and many fans have been fucked over.
If the club insist on travel with them they need around 20 planes don’t they, thats A lot of organising.
It wasn’t an announcement. It was an answer to a question in a press conference that how will fans be able to attend the game if UK visitors aren’t allowed. It seems now that UK visitors will be allowed from Monday. So the bubble won’t therefore be necessary. Guess we will find out later today.
Very doubtful. From what I can see, this is nothing to do with EU/non-EU despite some on here trying to politicise it, and is everything to do with controlling football fans and treating them differently to tourists. As things stand, your only chance of a ticket would be to travel to Manchester from Spain and book on an official club day trip over to Portugal and then back to Manchester afterwards. The very definition of a bubble match, and mirrors examples of bubble matches that have taken place in England such as the Burnley v Blackburn game where a Blackburn fan living in Burnley just round the corner from Turf Moor had to travel to Blackburn to board a coach to Burnley then travel back to Blackburn on the same coach afterwards before travelling back home to Burnley.
I thought that the bubble was to allow so many fans in the ground, not into Portugal. We'll see. Naturally I hope you are right and I am wrong.
Etihad flying all routes? Plenty of planes not flying.
The a club aren’t insisting on anything.
I don’t believe so. It was an answer about the fans mixing with locals, not being in bars, only being there 24 hours. All of that isn’t relevant if tourists are admitted again. It was in direct response to a reporter asking how could fans go to the game if UK visitors were banned and this was the ‘solution’
