An empty Champions League final that didn’t quite feel the same

It might not have been deliberate, but it was symbolic. About an hour after the Bayern Munich players had lifted the Champions League trophy, right-back Joshua Kimmich came back out onto the empty pitch with a drum. He beat it a few times and got a bit of a song going, before placing it on the centre circle. No sooner had it touched the ground, and a teammate sat down on it, the lights on the stadium went off. The three Bayern teammates were left there in darkness, only illuminated by the advertising hoardings, only just about seen by the remaining media in the stands.

It was quite a metaphor for this unprecedented campaign, and this unique end of season.

It also put into perspective what this was.

It is normally at this point on the night of a Champions League final where there are still thousands of fans in the stadium. Many want to take the opportunity to soak up history, as their club wins the most prestigious prize in football.

This win added to that glorious lineage, but was also history of a very different sense.

The images of this final will last as a record of the time when the world stopped. While many of us have by now adjusted as best we can to life amid Covid-19, a “global mega event” – as these fixtures are now described – like the Champions League final serves as a reminder of just how much it has changed our lives.

One of the great elements of the fixture is that it does genuinely feel like the centre of the planet while it is happening. The eyes of the world are on it, the host city always attracts hundreds of thousands of people, as well as a who’s who of football people and figures outside the game.

This was instead the final without fans, the show going on because it must.

It ensured it was an even greater privilege to attend the Champions League final than usual, to be among the few hundred there.

Never can a sporting event as celebrated as this have had so few people watching. And yet those circumstances left a lingering question. Was this a Champions League final in the truest sense? Did it feel like it?

It undeniably did in terms of the pure football as it was played. As has been the case throughout lockdown, the actual game has remained the same. The players still get intensely involved. There is even the growing – and legitimate – argument that the absence of fans makes players more focused, less distracted. The view is that we are seeing elite sportsmen playing with clearer minds.

The game had all the characteristics you would want of a fixture like this: great saves, agonising misses, moments of quality, a beautifully taken goal.

And yet what truly elevates the Champions League final as an event is the knowledge you’re watching a club and its supporters have their dreams fulfilled. That is what a competition with so much history really means. It has become the Holy Grail for so many clubs.

By the end, it was impossible not to notice this, to a far greater degree than at any point in lockdown football. The players celebrating on the pitch didn’t quite feel the same. The players wrapping their national flags around themselves didn’t quite feel the same. There was no one to show the European Cup to, other than the camera.

It just didn’t have the sense of communal shared celebration that this match usually does, where you fully get what it means for people.

That doesn’t mean this wasn’t a “proper” victory. It will still go down in the history of the competition, but also represents history in a very different way.

It just felt emptier.