Baku, Azerbaijan, May 27
Trend:
UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin in an interview with German "Der Spiegel" spoke about why Baku was chosen as the venue for the Europa League final, Trend reports.
"Why? Because people live there. They love football. We have to develop football everywhere, not just in England and Germany," he said.
UEFA president noted that the clubs returned some tickets because they couldn't sell them all.
"By the way, I was told that Easyjet raised airfare for the flights. Does anyone ask them? It's always supposed to be UEFA's fault. That's populism. How about providing a constructive proposal, a fund, to which every club contributes to support fans traveling to the finals. Of course, Baku is far away from London. But when we decided the finals location, we couldn't have known that both teams would be coming from England," Čeferin said.
Speaking about the refusal of the Armenian football player of "Arsenal" Henrikh Mkhitaryan to come to Baku for the final, UEFA president stressed that Azerbaijan provided guarantees and a thorough security plan.
"It was the player's decision not to travel. If we let tensions stop football, nothing can be organized any longer. We also organized a safe European Championship in France, when France was a target of terrorists," he said.