This June, we were the lucky guests of IT again for the UEFA Champions League Final 2015 which was held in Berlin, Germany.
Beside Sue and IT, we were joined by MW(HK) and MI(CH). We arrived at the Olympiastadion around dusk after much traffic congestion, despite being transported in a VIP bus provided by the game’s sponsors.
The Olympiastadion was built for the 1936 Olympic Games, the 11th Summer Olympics. Adolf Hitler wanted to use the stadium for propaganda and ordered the construction of a new sports complex rather than renovating an existing Deutsches Stadion.
We waited quite a bit on the outside before being let in through a VIP entrance. As we learnt afterwards, there were as many as 5000 counterfeit tickets in circulation and UEFA was trying to deal with it outside the stadium.
The stadium was renovated in 2004 and hosted 6 matches including the final for the 2006 FIFA World Cup. Its capacity is about 75,000 spectators – the largest football stadium in Germany.
The two teams in this year’s Champion League final are FC Barcelona, Spain and Juventus from Torino, Italy.
Juve was the underdog team.
We had seats in midfield, half way up the side facing the player’s entrance.
The Barça fans are on our left and Juve fans on the right.
The game started with a short opening ceremony.
Having been to Camp Nou – the clubhouse of FC Barcelona (click here for the post), I(Chris) knows the Barça team better. Now they have 3 South American star players – Messi, Neymar and Suarez.
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The game was very exciting, top-level play, without excessive pushing or tripping. We were truly surprised when the half time whistle was blown as the game was so engrossing that we did not even look at our watches.
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Barça won the game 3-1, being the overall better team. Juve had its moment after they scored an equalizer but their high spirit was quickly lost when Barça scored its second goal. Even before the third goal was scored in the last minutes of the game, it was all over for Juventus already.
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This was our third attendance of a Champions League final game (lucky us) and this game was the most enjoyable to watch.
We saw the other two games – 2012 in Munich (Allianz stadium, Chelsea beat Bayern Munich, click here to see us holding the actual cup before the game and also here) and 2013 in London (Wembley, Bayern Munich beat Borussia Dortmund, click here). The stadium and hospitality service in Berlin was better than Wembley and on par with Allianz.
All thanks to IT.