THE UEFA SUPER CUP will be contested by Chelsea and Villarreal this year, as the winners of the Champions League and Europa League from last season go head-to-head.
This is the third of three major European finals in 2021, all of which have involved a Premier League team.
The Blues claimed the Champions League title in May by beating Man City 1-0 in Porto, while Villarreal defeated Man Utd to seal their first ever Europa League trophy.
And now the two winning sides will face off in Belfast tonight at Windsor Park.
The winner of the tie will etch their name onto England’s ninth Super Cup, fewer than only Spain (15) and Italy (9), and will be the first Premier League side to claim the trophy since Liverpool did against Chelsea just two years ago.
The game will be shown live on BT Sport 2, who currently hold the rights to Champions League and Europa League matches in the UK.
Is there penalties in the Super Cup?
The Super Cup is a fixture organised by Uefa – as such, it has the same rules and regulations as any other competition run by European football’s administrative body.
As in any European knockout tie, if the scores are level at the end of regulation time the game will head into two additional 15-minute periods of extra time.
A penalty shootout will be used to determine the winner of the match should the two teams remain deadlocked after that further half-an-hour.
Has the Super Cup gone to extra time and penalties before?
No less than 11 Super Cup matches have required extra time to decide the winner, and only two have ever gone as far as penalties.
The first was in 1982, when European champions Aston Villa came from a goal down to beat Barcelona 3-1 on aggregate at Villa Park.
Understandably, since the Super Cup was restructured from a double-legged tie into a single match from 1998 onwards, the number of games heading into extra time has increased – in fact, only two of the last six encounters have been solved within 90 minutes.
Liverpool required the additional half-an-hour to brush aside CSKA Moscow in 2005, with Djibril Cisse and Luis Garcia scoring either side of the break.
More recently, in 2013, extra time wasn’t enough to separate Bayern Munich and the Chelsea, but the German powerhouses went on to emerge victorious from the penalty shootout.
Frank Lampard captained the Blues that day, but will be hoping for better luck in the dugout against Jurgen Klopp this time around.
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
