Portugal’s president on Saturday criticised the country’s government for failing to enforce a Covid-19 “bubble" in Porto ahead of the Champions League final between Manchester City and Chelsea. The final of Europe’s premier club tournament was scheduled to be played in Istanbul but was moved to Porto as Portugal is on the British government’s green travel list. Around 6,000 supporters from each club had tickets for Saturday’s match and thousands more made the journey to northern Portugal. Special fan zones, where access was restricted to people able to show a negative Covid-19 test, have also been set up. Supporters were supposed to be kept apart from local residents in the city.
But scenes of visitors failing to respect social distancing rules in the city since they began arriving on Thursday angered President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.
“You can’t tell the supporters to stay in a ‘bubble’ and then the bubble doesn’t exist," he said during a visit to a food bank.
“No-one can tell supporters to obey the rules, to fix limits and then say that the limit is different."
The majority of supporters are expected to leave Portugal on Sunday.
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