It is 7am on Sunday morning at Gatwick airport, three days before the Europa League final, and there are already a lot of Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur shirts. Some are travelling to Bilbao this early because flights are almost a thousand pounds cheaper.
A few have friends on connections hundreds of miles in the opposite direction, through Malaga and even Marrakesh. A group are getting the 35-hour ferry from Portsmouth. Some are only in Bilbao for the game itself, due to a total lack of accommodation. Even hostels are going for £550.
Spurs fan Adam Nathan talks of “spending the best part of another season ticket to attend the game”.
“Planning the trip was made difficult by the scandalous pricing of direct flights and limited accommodation,” adds Dale O’Donnell, a United fan. “We looked at all the routes, before deciding to fly to Bordeaux. We’ll leave in the early hours after the game.”
Bilbao is simply a brilliant city, as well as a brilliant football city, with a great stadium too. But its infrastructure isn’t quite equipped for 80,000 fans, or more, arriving. That’s almost a quarter of its own population. Bilbao could be overwhelmed, diluting much of its good.
And while prices are always going to rise for major events, this has been up there with the worst in recent years. That’s all the more remarkable given this is a trip to northern Spain.
“There is profiteering everywhere but, with so little time to book, it’s just wrong that this happens every final,” says Barney Chilton of the Red News fanzine. “I’m not sure what Uefa can do, but surely something. The majority get royally done over just wanting to see their team in a rare European final.”
While much of this is just “demand”, why not stage potentially mass-attended finals where there is more supply?
It certainly raises the key question of why supporters so often have to bear the cost of decisions taken way above their heads, not to mention about the nature of those decisions. Numerous sources describe host selection processes as “not very transparent”.
For Uefa’s part, there is obvious merit to spreading such showpieces around Europe. English fan groups like the Football Supporters’ Association naturally agree “it’s important to remember the wider continental dynamic”.
That’s all the more pointed when one view within Uefa is that “it’s usually just the English clubs who complain”. That’s partly true, but only because their sheer sizes mean tens of thousands are always guaranteed to travel for finals. Given the Premier League’s modern strength, too, Uefa’s more noble intentions must surely be tempered by health and safety concerns as well as some duty to fan loyalty?
“Football asks so much of fans to create atmosphere, and you’re always reminded how little they care about you,” Nathan says.
None of this is new, either. There was “great concern” within Uefa last year, when it became clear Dublin would have struggled with the 200,000 Liverpool fans who planned to travel for the Europa League final, and what might have been Jurgen Klopp’s last game. That anxiety only rose when it looked like Rangers or West Ham United might meet them there. None of them got that far, and Dublin ended up being ideal for Atalanta and Bayer Leverkusen.
That’s the other side of this. Bilbao would have had no issue with Lyon against Eintracht Frankfurt, either. This will to spread the fixture is also deepened by the awareness that the Champions League final is now such a mega-event that there are currently probably only seven cities with the scale to stage it: London, Berlin, Munich, Madrid, Barcelona, Lisbon and now Budapest.
Paris has the necessary 70,000-seater stadium in St Denis, but 2022 was a near disaster so it won’t be used for some time. Istanbul’s Ataturk involved similar issues in 2023 and Italy doesn’t have stadiums that are modern enough. Russia has obviously dropped from potential options, too.
That leaves many cities pitching for the Europa League, which then encounters problems when its final takes on Champions League scale. Uefa obviously don’t know whether that’s going to be the case in the semi-finals, let alone four years before, when the hosts are usually chosen.
Bilbao was awarded this one in a 2021 settlement, after Covid restrictions meant it was removed as a host city of Euro 2020.
There hasn’t actually been a vote for the Europa League final since 2018, which was for the 2022 showpiece in Seville. Even those are naturally conditioned by politics. Many football executives remain exasperated by how much of the game is still influenced by who gets to host what. A final can make a huge difference for a national association’s leadership, which can in turn ensure loyalty to the Uefa hierarchy. Such processes, as well as the apparent lack of checks and balances amid potential clientelism, have repeatedly been questioned by reformers. Insiders similarly talk of how there often feels a “one for me, one for you” approach.
Wembley generates by far the most income, for example, even though there is little “political” benefit to giving finals to the FA. That year’s revenue then leaves other fixtures freer to be chosen for more football or political reasons. A Conference League final in Tirana encourages genuine “legacy” investment from local authorities, so the game’s infrastructure is improved. Istanbul 2023, which was initially 2020, was meanwhile seen as a political vote.
Such politics can go even deeper. Uefa love the Spurs and Arsenal stadiums, but it is the national football associations that submit bids, and the FA naturally have an interest in promoting Wembley. The Bernabeu is meanwhile unlikely to be used for some time due to Uefa’s dismal relationship with Real Madrid.
All of these form reasons why Uefa insist it is impossible to move finals at short notice. There are just too many agreements and works. While many naturally point to the precedents of the 2020, 2021 and 2022 Champions League finals being moved, they were down to exceptional circumstances. Turkey’s own Covid restrictions saw Istanbul’s final switched twice, while St Petersburg was stripped of 2022 after the invasion of Ukraine.
Fan cost doesn’t meet such criteria, something a little ironic when one of the arguments against moving finals is that cities themselves spend huge amounts on applications. They also require numerous agreements with local authorities, especially on security. Uefa themselves need to ensure accommodation for huge workforces, as well as sponsors. The latter is unlikely to generate much sympathy.
Even if a final was moved at short notice, though, the same venue could just have the same problem the next year.
Some in Uefa feel the clubs could charter more flights. Eintracht Frankfurt planned to do exactly that for the controversial 2019 final in Baku, only to fall short at the semi-finals. The Azerbaijani capital was one venue that did prompt more serious talk about moving the final, given the logistical difficulties Chelsea and Arsenal fans endured.
Such discussions haven’t actually happened for Bilbao. There is nevertheless an acceptance within Uefa that this is something they have to start thinking about more, especially given the strength of the Premier League.
The governing body has generally had to be more proactive, given the many self-inflicted issues through a series of finals over 2021 to 2023. Internal concerns about a loss of expertise have increased.
While such issues have calmed over the last year, there is a definite trepidation in Bilbao about the volume of fans arriving.
This needs to go well. The city deserves it, but not as much as fans who have spent so much.
