After the joy of reaching the Champions League and Europa League finals, fans of the English quartet dusting off their passports will have to fight it out for a what will now be a golden ticket.
Arsenal and Chelsea booked their places in the Europa League final on Thursday night, to join Liverpool and Tottenham, who dramatically secured their places in the Champions League final.
For the chance to watch their team create history, Reds and Spurs fans have been dealt the “scandalous” task securing one of the 16,613 tickets allocated to each side – with the combined total not even half of the Atletico Madrid’s 67,800-capacity Wanda Metropolitano stadium.
While Arsenal and Chelsea face an even trickier prospect of securing a ticket from a measly 6,000 available to each club. Some fans have described the decision as a “disgrace” and a “scandal”.
Baku’s Olympic Stadium in Azerbaijan is 2,850 miles from London and has an official capacity of 68,700, meaning there will be 56,700 tickets not allocated to the clubs involved.
The Gunners have already insisted they are working with UEFA to gain a larger percentage of seats to add to the “disappointing ticket allocation”.
“We are in active discussions with UEFA for more tickets for our fans but this disappointing ticket allocation obviously presents us with extreme difficulties in how we allocate tickets to you, our loyal supporters,” the club said in a statement.
“It is inevitable that with an allocation of just 6,000 tickets for the final, there will be thousands of fans who have supported the club for years and been part of our Europa League journey this season, who will be unable to attend this match. This is a disappointing situation.”
Chelsea said their official allocation was 5,801 tickets. They did not say whether they would be asking for more.
The all-English Champions League final also promises to give England manager Gareth Southgate a headache ahead of this summer’s Nations League Finals.
He may have to deal with the delayed arrival of up to 10 players to the squad.
England play Holland on June 6 in Guimaraes, Portugal, five days after the Champions League final.
“Although it makes our preparation a bit more complicated, that is a challenge that we have to deal with as a group of staff,” said Southgate.
“We have got to adapt. We are always telling our players to adapt so we have got to do the same. We can still prepare the team for the game with Holland.”
