Our View: It’s about restoring faith in the game

THE MOST eagerly-awaited sports event of the year takes place tonight as Manchester United take on Barcelona in the Champions League Final at Wembley stadium. The match pits the extravagant skills and flair of Spain’s champions against the power and discipline of the England’s premiership winners, in a repeat of the 2009 final which the Catalan club won comfortably.

Barcelona the undisputed custodians of the beautiful game will no doubt have the support of the neutrals and purists, their flamboyant passing game a joy to behold. But Sir Alex Ferguson’s United is made up of true fighters who are intimidated by nobody and never give up, as a superior Bayern Munich found out in stoppage time in the 1999 final.

Contrasting styles usually make for an intriguing and exciting contest. We hope this is what Europe’s top clubs will showcase tonight, without the gamesmanship that has become a regular feature of top-flight football. After last year’s violent World Cup final and dull Champions’ League Final football fans deserve to see a final that will restore their faith in the world’s most popular game.

United and Barca are the two European sides that could do this.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.