PORTO: Manchester City’s Pep Guardiola and Chelsea’s Thomas Tuchel are in Porto as anticipation rises for Saturday’s all-English Champions League final in the Portuguese city that was picked as a last-minute host.
It’s the third final of Europe’s top club competition to include two Premier League teams, and the second in as many seasons, demonstrating the cash-rich English game’s power.
And these are the two clubs whose changes under mega-rich foreign owners over the previous two decades have had the greatest impact on the Premier League’s landscape.
The west London club had a head-start in terms of becoming big-spenders and as a club they have the experience of this stage in Europe before, having beaten Bayern Munich on penalties on their own turf in the 2012 final.
They have also won the Europa League twice since then.
City, though, have never made it this far but are finally here, after 13 years of enormous investment from the Gulf and four previous years of disappointment.
Porto is one of the most lovely final host cities, with its cobblestone alleys falling down to the shoreline, which looks across the Douro River to the Port wine warehouses on the other side.
On Friday, English supporters began to congregate on cafe terraces beneath dazzling blue sky. The Estadio do Dragao has been allowed to be filled to 33 percent capacity by Portuguese authorities.
Many more people are likely to show up in the city without having purchased tickets.
Cops in Portugal have described coping with such a large influx of English fans as “a really sophisticated operation.”
