Awesome news for Benfica to celebrate their 110 years of existence and most importantly a great spectacle for Portugal. Last time a CL final was held in Lisbon was in 1967. Long overdue.
Great for Benfica and Lisboa! I'm definitely going to try to go to the final regardless of who plays. Beautiful stadium. Honored to be hosting the final. Would be amazing for Benfica to make a huge CL run that year.
Congrats to Lisbon and your stadium. Can't believe the last time you held it was back in 1967 I remember when your stadium had the capacity of 120,000. Not sure if that was offcial numbers but my dad used to go there all the time to patrol the stadium during matches and he couldn't believe how many people could fit in there Took UEFA 10 years to put a CL final in Lisbon after Euro 2004. That is messed up. Our stadiums are state of the art.
I'm afraid it wasn't official, only estimated. Actually, it is reported some games achieved supposedly 130 thousand, or even more. There's one particular game against Porto where people are everywhere, even in the exits. There wasn't even any room for a fly. About in 1997-98 or so, the stadium got seats all-around and its capacity was reduced to between 85 and 90 thousand. The seats weren't numbered back then, only for reserved seats (other tier). You needed to be on the stadium 3 or 4 hours prior to the game, in the old 3rd tier, to get seats with the best view possible. In 12 years time, so much has changed, those days are gone for good (sigh). Anyway, back on topic, these are great news for the club. It's a great opportunity to achieve another final.
I definitley want to make it out to this game regardless of who plays (hoping for Benfica, what a treat that would be) Estadio da luz is by far the nicest stadium ive been too EVER. AT&T Park in San Francisco where the Giants play is awesome too, however The Luz has it beat. I hope they honor the old Benfica players from the 60's, that would be sick!
I always heard there were 120,000 or 130,000 when Portugal played Brasil in the U20 final in 1991. But yea, when they added seats in the mid 90s the capacity was reduced to around 80,000. BTW, doesn't UEFA and FIFA have a cap on how many people can be in a stadium? 75,000 I believe?
I remember when Portugal played Rep. Ireland in the Euro 96 qualifiers, the announcers kept saying that there were about 120,000 fans and based on the camera shots, it was packed. I know Benfica reduced the capacity to 80,000 seated shortly after 96 for safety reasons.