MONACO (AP) — Good luck Manchester City, Tottenham, Juventus and Monaco — one of them will have to travel north of the Arctic Circle in mid-January to play a Champions League game.
All four were drawn Thursday as away opponents for Norwegian champion Bodo/Glimt, whose 8,000-capacity Aspmyra stadium is located farther north than soccer's top club competition has ever been.
And Real Madrid’s team of superstars is going farther east than the Champions League has ever been, to play at Kairat Almaty in Kazakshtan near its border with China.
That is a flight of about 6,420 kilometers (4,000 miles) across three time zones from the Spanish capital.
Thursday's draw only paired teams with their opponents but did not determine the dates of any of the games, so it's still unclear which teams will be making those trips in the middle of winter.
The temperature in Almaty, a city that once bid to host the Winter Olympics, can drop to minus-20 C (minus-4 F) in January.
Visitors to Bodo/Glimt could expect to bask in the relative heat of minus-7 C (19 F) in January. That is what greeted Maccabi Tel Aviv seven months ago in a Europa League game. The Israeli visitors lost 3-1 on Bodo/Glimt's heated artificial turf.
New challenges
Bodo/Glimt and Almaty are both newcomers to the Champions League, and their locations present extra challenges after the competition schedule was changed from last season to include games in January. Though the weather could prove challenging in other months, too.
The 40,000 people living in coastal Bodo can get heavy snow in April — as they did when 10 centimeters (four inches) fell overnight when Lazio visited in the Europa League quarterfinals.
“So Lazio was saying, ‘How are we going to play this game?’” Bodo/Glimt chairman Inge Henning Andersen said Thursday ahead of the Champions League draw. “Just shuffle the snow away. The heat is on. We don’t need to adjust anything playing in Bodo."
If snow does force a game to be postponed, the teams should try again the following afternoon, the Bodo official said.
Tottenham already visited Bodo for last season's Europa League semifinal, though that was in May.
Long-haul soccer
Regardless of the time of the year, there will be some extreme long-haul flights for some teams in this Champions League edition.
Madrid, the record 15-time champion of Europe, will be joined by Club Brugge, Olympiakos and Cypriot newcomer Pafos having to play Kairat in central Asia.
“It’s no problem, it’s football,” said Kairat general director Askar Yessimov, suggesting opponents should travel two days before the game.
Kairat’s players and fans, however, will make four of those return trips, not just one like their opponents. They had 11 hours flying time last week to face Celtic in Glasgow in the qualifying playoffs, Yessimov said.
The champion of Kazakhstan was drawn with away games at Inter Milan, Arsenal, Copenhagen and — furthest of all — Sporting Lisbon.
Almaty to Lisbon is about 7,000 kilometers (4,350 miles), which should set a record in Europe’s marquee competition.
Kazakhstani teams have played in European competitions only since 2002 when it became a member of UEFA, and Astana played in the 2015-16 Champions League. The former Soviet Union republic had first joined the Asian Football Confederation in 1994.
Azerbaijan also is represented in this Champions League, with Qarabag due to play home games in Baku. That is about 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles) from London for Chelsea and slightly shorter flights for Eintracht Frankfurt, Ajax and Copenhagen.
Qarabag's players and fans have long trips west to Liverpool, Lisbon – to play Benfica – Athletic Bilbao and Napoli.
Western Europe dominates
The travel demands reflect how the Champions League is now a very western European affair concentrated on the richest clubs in the richest leagues.
With no teams from Ukraine, Croatia or Serbia among the 36 clubs in the league phase this season, the only other from a former Iron Curtain country is Slavia Prague. No eastern European team advanced to the 24-team knockout phase last season.
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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
Graham Dunbar, The Associated Press
