Liverpool’s victory in the Champions League final last night means we now know we will be playing the Merseysiders in the UEFA Super Cup match at the start of next season.
The annual fixture pits the winners of the Champions League with the team that lifted the Europa League trophy, and here are the details for 2019…
Where and when
Chelsea will take on Liverpool for the prize of the UEFA Super Cup on Wednesday 14 August in Istanbul in Turkey. The match is midweek between the first two Premier League matches of the season.
The venue
The host ground is the new Besiktas stadium on the banks of the Bosphorus. Although Chelsea played Besiktas in the group stage of the 2003/04 Champions League, the away game was moved to Gelsenkirchen in Germany due to security concerns so this will be our first visit to this Turkish club’s home ground. We have previously played at Galatasaray and Fenerbahce in Istanbul.The reconstructed stadium, which opened in 2016, was built on the same site as Beskitas’ old İnonu Stadium.
Super Cup past
Chelsea have played three previous Super Cup matches. We beat Real Madrid 1-0 in Monaco in 1998, the third trophy we won that calendar year having qualified by lifting the Cup Winners’ Cup. Our other two appearances ended in defeat – 4-1 to Atletico Madrid in 2012, again in Monaco, and the following year when a penalty shoot-out decided a match against Bayern Munich in Prague.Liverpool will play in their sixth Super Cup. They won in 1977, 2001 and 2005.
This will be the first Super Cup to be contested by two English sides since it began in 1972.Previous matches between sides from the same nation are:1990: AC Milan v Sampdoria1993: Parma v AC Milan2006: Sevilla v Barcelona2014: Real Madrid v Sevilla2015: Barcelona v Sevilla2016: Real Madrid v Sevilla2018: Atletico Madrid v Real Madrid