Liverpool will play in Madrid

By: Al | October 16th, 2008

This picture of our coach sums up how I feel.

It’s official. Champions League Matchday 3 will be played at the Vicente Calderon after all.

After Atlético appealed, the UEFA decided to cut us some slack for the time being and to not complicate things at such short notice.

The stadium ban is still postponed and will still be in effect in the future, but thankfully the Liverpool supporters that have booked everything already will have to change nothing.

Javier “‘I can wearz a Mexico jersey too lol” Aguirre is also un-banned from the sidelines for the next match. However, it’s still unknown if and when he’ll be facing ban. Nice to see ya smilin’, Vasco.

(I just had to include this picture, sorry!)

Here’s part of UEFA’s official statement:

“After immediate consideration of the request for suspension, and having considered in particular the organisational and logistical difficulties related to relocating the Club Atletico de Madrid v Liverpool FC match to another venue at short notice, the chairman of the appeals body has decided to grant the request for suspension of the sanctions.

The short notice was worst part of the original decision. The PSV match will be the match that will be re-located somewhere else. As things stand, we’ll still be banned from an additional home match, assuming we progress into the last 16 (which we will).

Fernando Torres will also miss his return due to injury from the match yesterday against Belgium, and is out for 10-15 days. We all wanted to see “The Fernando Torres Show: The Homecoming” and it looked like we were close to doing so, but bad luck smacked him upside the head at the worst possible time. I hate to say it, but the less Liverpool threat the better. Here’s to a speedy recovery, Fernando.

Enough about the ban, man.

Fine, fine.

Raúl García, Miguel de las Cuevas and Sinama are the first players back from international duty and are already training with the group. The rest of the players will arrive within the next day. Maniche, Simao and Diego Forlán have begun training with the team as well. Sabroso.

The derby preview will be up soon, but in the meantime, consider purchasing an authentic Atlético de Madrid baby for only 40€ (I just wanted the bath robe). And sorry for the short post.

Aupa Atleti!