Champion League soccer within the Arctic Circle? Sub-zero temperatures and fewer than two hours of daylight could await Manchester Metropolis, Liverpool, Aston Villa or Arsenal (once more)
Champion League soccer within the Arctic Circle? Sub-zero temperatures and fewer than two hours of daylight could await Manchester Metropolis, Liverpool, Aston Villa or Arsenal (once more)
Sitting contained in the Arctic Circle in Northern Norway and primarily based in a city of solely round 56,000 folks, the city of Bodo could seem an unlikely vacation spot for Champions League soccer this season.
However Norwegian champions Bodo/Glimt are on the verge of creating it out of the qualifying phases of the competitors this season and will quickly play host to the likes of Actual Madrid,Manchester Metropolis,Liverpool, Juventus and Bayer Leverkusen.
Bodo/Glimt claimed a 2-1 win over Purple Star Belgrade on Tuesday night, placing them inside touching distance of qualifying for the clumsily-named Champions League league part.
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Bodo/Glimt a possible Champions League away journey like no different
Bodo is a small city within the north of Norway (Picture credit score: Getty)
The present Norwegian champions have by no means made it previous the qualifying rounds for UEFA’s marquee competitors earlier than, getting knocked out within the first qualifying spherical in 2021 and struggling extra-time heartbreak on the first hurdle towards Dinamo Zagreb in 2022/23.
That did nonetheless qualify Bodo/Glimt for the group stage of the Europa League, the place they confronted Arsenal, PSV and FC Zurich; they usually completed second of their Convention League group final season earlier than being knocked out by Dutch giants Ajax.
You gained’t be shocked to be taught that Bodo play on a man-made pitch: even working on a summer time season, the northern Norwegian local weather would make actual turf impractical.
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Bodo/Glimt might be moving into the Champions League (Picture credit score: Getty)
The league part of the Champions League will run till January this season, when in a single day lows of -4 levels centigrade might be anticipated, with balmy highs of 1 diploma.
Really, we are saying ‘in a single day’, however that’s sort of meaningless: being so near the north pole, Bodo has each extremes all year long, with perpetual daylight on the top of summer time and near-constant darkness all through the winter.
That signifies that ought to Champions League soccer come to Bodo for matchday 6 on December 10-11, there will probably be not more than 1 hour and 50 minutes of daylight all day, with the solar rising round 11am and going again down simply earlier than 1pm. The Northern Lights might be noticed from Bodo…although we think about the floodlights would put paid to the possibilities of seeing them from the stadium.
So for those who do fly to Bodo (which, as a home airport, requires a change elsewhere in Norway)…benefit from your lunch break.
