adminMADRID. — Madrid bars will be packed tomorrow with red-striped Atletico Madrid football fans and Real Madrid rivals, all in white, drinking and yelling the night away for the first one-city Champions League final.
The two sides will not mix for the historic occasion though.
The match will be a new test of a century-old rivalry between the two sides in the Spanish capital.
Some 1 250 police will be on duty to prevent clashes.
“It is going to be a tense atmosphere. People will be very nervous,” said Marcos Vinagre, a 32-year-old Atletico fan who works as a porter in Madrid.
He thanks his father for making him an Atletico fan even though most of his friends support Real.
“The fans are going to spend the night each on their own turf with their own people,” said Alejandro Lora (64), president of an association of Real Madrid fan clubs.
“There’s a lot of excitement. They have been rivals since the very beginning.”
Shop windows dummies are dressed in the rival team shirts and on public squares hang giant posters of each team’s colours — red and white for the Atletico “Colchoneros” and meringue-white for the Real “Merengue”.
Real and Atletico will dispute the final in Lisbon. If Real win, it will be their 10th European title. For Atletico, it would be a first. Local authorities had planned to screen the match on Madrid’s Puerta del Sol square.
They changed their minds after security warnings. — AFP.
Online Reporter