The most unpredictable football assaults the Lisbon Champions League

The most anomalous European Cup in history has produced a semifinals in accordance with the exceptionalities that the pandemic guides. To the heartbreaking coldness that empty states transmit in duels that would have burst bleachers, to the absence of color and hubbub that would have colored and agitated the streets of fascinating Lisbon, there have been unexpected semifinals marked by the double Franco-German confrontation. For Germany, the reborn and intimidating Bayern, a classic and only surviving champion, and Red Bull Leipzig, an entity with an eleven-year history born of the attraction that football generates in the big brands. On the French side, Paris Saint Germain, a state club that conceives the title as the only possible culmination of its groundbreaking market investments, and Olympique de Lyon, which relives its happy 90s and the beginning of the century in which it appeared to the front line of European football. A couple of clubs as representatives of the two nations that have won the last two World Cups, Germany in 2014 and France, in 2018: Leipzig-PSG on Tuesday and Bayern-Lyon on Wednesday.

No sign of the Premier and LaLiga, which boast of selling themselves to the world of football as organizers of the two best leagues in the world. “Farmers League”, Kylian Mbappé ironized on his social networks to applaud Lyon's victory over City and defend the competitiveness of the French championship.

Due to its economic power, England will be able to continue competing to cast teams in the final rounds. It does not seem so clear that the blow that Spanish football has suffered is a mere accident. There are obvious doubts about the validity of the model with which it established its hegemony. Financial cuts threaten both the brain drain and the ability to recruit them abroad.

The presence of Bayern, five crowns, and the millionaire PSG, are a normality within the rarities of the tournament, with its final phase format to eight and a single match. The latter has made good the hackneyed "everything is possible to a game." And when it is fulfilled it strengthens one of the pillars on which it grew and sustains the massive attraction for the game. Faced with the aspirations of leaders who seek exclusive competitions, this atypical European Cup claims the charm that the little one knocks down the big one. Leipzig was the executioner of the team that owns the most expensive player, João Félix, and Lyon have given account of another club sponsored by a state. These semi-finals may be bad for business, but not for the purity of football. They are not Real Madrid, king of the tournament, neither Messi nor Cristiano, bitter and doubtful if Barcelona and Juventus are ideal to continue competing. There is Leipzig, proud to represent the breath of fresh air that is the daring and innovative Julien Nagelsmann. There is Lyon, of the metallic and conscientious Rudi García who, like Tomas Tuchel with PSG, leads a team that comes from a six-month break with hardly any competition. Another surprising edge of the abnormality that presides over everything. "We have been in the preseason for six months and now it seems that we are playing games in China," warns a member of the PSG coaching staff to corroborate the greatest of all the anomalies that the coronavirus has generated. Without the passion of the fan, football loses its most vital half.