Arsenal and Chelsea played in the UEFA Europa League final last week and it was the Blues who came out as 4-1 winners.
The match was pretty evenly poised up until half-time but as soon as the game restarted, it was the Eden Hazard show.
While the game was a really entertaining one – especially for the Chelsea fans but the UEFA Europa League final was marred by a large number of controversies.
From a small number of ticket allocations to the final itself being played at such an odd country, the buildup to the final had seen a lot.
But once the match ended, UEFA were hit with one more controversy as many fans claimed that the local people were allowed to enter the stadium during the middle of the match as the authorities tried to fill up the largely empty stadium.
“We were in the Arsenal corner and there were a lot of empty seats and suddenly after about 30 minutes lots of local people arrived, including some kids, and they had been given Arsenal flags to wave,” one supporter told The Times(as reported by the Independent).
Reports also suggested that UEFA were pretty furious with this incident and they were planning to launch an investigation.
“It’s understood that Uefa are extremely unhappy with the decision being made without their knowledge and are investigating how the turnstiles were opened without their knowledge, leaving them powerless to prevent it,” as per the Independent.
Now though, the governing body of football in Europe has shockingly chosen to take a complete u-turn in a statement which clearly shows the levels that UEFA can stoop to in order to save their backs.
UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin said in a statement: “I don’t think so. Football is also passion and development.
“You should see how people were that we brought [the final] there. Yeah, the stadium was not full. But it was the third biggest attendance in the history of the Europa League [finals], 51,370.
“We have a duty to develop football everywhere. Not just in big countries. And we couldn’t know who will qualify.”
