Detailed plans for Coronavirus for Champions League security have been immediately tested

Those last few minutes, just before the start, were mapped out with almost military precision. At exactly 8:50 local time, a disinfected Champions League ball will be placed on a ceremonial plinth. At 20:53 the players will leave their locker rooms. The teams will enter the field, separately, no more than two and a half minutes later.

At 20:57, when the penalties of the Champions League national anthem blow out of the stadium’s speakers, players will stand in the stands – anything but low – while maintaining social distance: one meter between each player. Team photos are at 20:57 and 50 seconds, but the photojournalists do not have to take them long: the coin box is at 8:58.

And then, at 9pm local time on Wednesday, European football will enter uncharted territory. After months of planning, weeks of uncertainty, hours of meetings and hundreds upon hundreds of pages of minutes and instructions, the strangest, most intense Champions League in history will finally begin its (late) push to the finals.

Rather than delivering a slow-burning climax for the European season, with the last three rounds of games taking place over almost two months and staged across the continent, the Champions League, the most coveted prize in club football, will be in just 10 days and in one city: Lisbon.

If, that is, the coronavirus leaves it. Already one team has to deal with a possible outbreak: Atlético Madrid announced on Sunday that two members of their traveling party are testing positive.

By the rules, the two players – Angel Correa and Sime Vrsaljko – were isolated from the rest of the team, and on Monday Atlético announced that they would return to training and continue their preparations for a Thursday quarter-final against RB Leipzig. That is also allowed; even in the midst of an outburst from a closet, a team can continue to play as long as the club can field 11 starters and two reserves that test negative.

The whole knockout round is, in fact, an abrupt break from history, and not one UEFA – the organizer of the competition, and the governing body of European football – is desperate to repeat. It is also not quite a pure Champions League as everyone might have hoped, as there are big differences in the preparations of the eight teams that have made it. Paris St.-Germain, who play the opening match against Italy’s Atalanta on Wednesday, have only played two competitive games since March. Bayern Munich had a month-long break between the German Cup final and their meeting with Chelsea on Saturday, a dismissal that Oliver Kahn, the club’s next chief executive, said could be a disadvantage.

The teams from England, Italy and Spain may in the meantime complain about a lack of rest. The Serie A season only ended on the first weekend of August, following a grueling schedule of 10 games in no more than six weeks. The Premier League campaign ended in the last week of July.

And then of course there are the hefty demands that are placed on the teams to ensure that the tournament can end. “I have a feeling that whichever team handles all these fears and responsibilities the best has a great chance of winning,” Kahn said.

These requirements affect almost every aspect of each team’s preparation. Last week, representatives of all 12 clubs that were still involved in the competition at the time called for an online interview with UEFA, the governing body of European football, to discuss what the tournament would look like.

They were presented with three sets of slides, amounting to more than 130 pages – and were also sent the 31-page “Return To Play” protocol covering almost every aspect of their stay in Portugal.

As well as detailing where each team in the city will stay and train, the slides informed them that they would receive 210 bottles of water, as well as 90 bottles of Gatorade, each day at their designated training facility; that they may request up to 50 kilograms of ice to be made available during training sessions and games; and that they not only had to supply photos, but the dimensions of their team buses, if they intended to supply their own.

They were presented with maps of the stadiums they will use, with details of where, exactly, their players will be allowed to warm up. So-called ‘fast feet’ exercises should take place away from the playing surface, and the area for each target mouth should not be touched. Players will not be allowed to perform hot downs on the field at all, in order to protect the turf as much as possible for other matches.

They were run through the test schedule for each of their players – one before leaving for Lisbon, one immediately on arrival, one the day before each match. The results will not be announced more than six hours before the start of the return leg – to ensure that competition does not see an outbreak of the kind that has disrupted several major sports in the United States.

UEFA has a procedure in place when a team takes a positive test: The game will continue, with that player (as players) not involved. Games will only be canceled if a team cannot nominate 13 fit players. In that situation, the team forgets that can not continue. The result will be recorded as a 3-0 defeat. UEFA, the meeting made clear, has a procedure for almost everything.

There is a good reason for that. The organization has put far too much work into the competition to not finish, for Europe to not be a champion. It has not only been a monumental endeavor in terms of planning, but also in terms of politics.

The day after Atlético Madrid eliminated Liverpool, last year’s winner, in March, the idea that the Champions League could be completed seemed overwhelming. The coronavirus pandemic had stopped football in Europe, and competition from the continent’s showpiece was frozen halfway through its round of 16.

As the hiatus escalated and leagues tried to choose a return to action, the Champions League appeared, if anything, in even greater danger. UEFA had publicly stated their commitment to play out the competition – the financial consequences of not doing so were too many to consider – but the way forward was all but clear.

By May, UEFA had realized that there was only one available conclusion. The tournament had to be packed in a maximum of three weeks. Unlike the returning domestic leagues, it had to correlate teams from multiple countries, with different regulations regarding the transmission of the virus. It should be a knockout competition, a series of one-and-done games played in one country, more akin to the final stages of a World Cup.

Turkey was convinced it could host such a tournament: the Champions League final was, after all, planned for Istanbul before the pandemic hit. However, UEFA was skeptical. Turkey was considered too much of a risk. Germany, Spain, Hungary and Portugal all volunteered to take his place, and Turkey agreed to act, promising instead of next year.

At the same time, Portuguese officials made their move. Fernando Gomes and Tiago Craveiro, the president and chief executive officer of the country’s football association, had developed a close relationship with the UEFA management. They insist that Portugal was not hit as hard as other nations at the time, and that Lisbon had experience in hosting major events. The field worked.

With a format and a location, UEFA now had to take care of the organization. Under normal circumstances, this can take months. It only took a few weeks. A hosting agreement, including taxes, was hammered out with the Portuguese government and a detailed health protocol was made. The games, announced by UEFA, would take place without fans.

To avoid complaints about favoritism and petty arguments among the teams, hotels slots were assigned in the league draw, meaning where each team would stay and train would be as much a case of luck of the draw as the opponents who it would counteract.

Then there was the matter of insuring UEFA’s broadcasters. Some had already secured clawbacks and discounts from national leagues, but UEFA managed to strike a deal. Millions of dollars will have to be returned, but exactly how much will depend on the success of this month’s tournament. The final figure will determine the total prize money teams will receive.

In July, all the work suddenly turned out to be under threat. Portugal had an alarming spike in cases of coronavirus, central to Lisbon. The country’s authorities set up a starting point in the city, and some began to question whether Portugal should host the event in any case.

The UEFA leadership, led by its president, Alexander Ceferin, held talks with senior Portuguese officials, including Prime Minister Antonio Costa. The football teams delivered a detailed presentation, with mountains of statistics and graphs, which, they said, showed that Portugal’s test record and treatment of the virus meant there was not much threat to the tournament.

That last hard work was removed, UEFA could press on. On August 4, it presented the final version of what their emergency Champions League would look like at the clubs. The focus was on all the sudden norms of this new world: face masks and hand sanitization and social distance.

There will be only one nod to the past. At 20.50, exactly 10 minutes before the start of each match, a match ball will be placed on its base. On the curved surface of the ball, just below an image of the Champions League trophy, two words will serve as a reminder that this is not how it should be. ‘Istanbul 2020,’ it will read.