Paris St-Germain have been allocated an additional dressing room ahead of Wednesday's UEFA Super Cup against Aston Villa at Red Bull Arena in Salzburg, Austria, after club officials raised concerns about their allocated facilities with UEFA at a pre-game meeting on Monday.
PSG given extra dressing room ahead of Super Cup against Aston Villa in Salzburg
Paris St-Germain have been allocated an additional dressing room ahead of Wednesday's UEFA Super Cup against Aston Villa at Red Bull Arena in Salzburg, Austria, after club officials raised concerns about their allocated facilities with UEFA at a pre-game meeting on Monday.
PSG, the reigning Super Cup champions having beaten Tottenham on penalties the previous year, were assigned the away dressing room at Red Bull Arena — the home ground of Red Bull Salzburg — while Aston Villa used the home dressing room. According to BBC Sport, PSG officials felt their dressing room was too small and wanted access to the same amount of space as Europa League winners Villa.
UEFA resolved the dispute by allocating PSG a spare dressing room ordinarily used by match officials, giving the French club comparable space to their opponents. According to BBC Sport, no match officials were relocated to accommodate the arrangement.
According to Al Jazeera, Somali referee Omar Artan is set to officiate the match, which would make him the first non-European referee to officiate a UEFA Super Cup. Al Jazeera also reports that Artan was denied entry to the United States to officiate matches during the World Cup despite holding a valid visa.
- Neither source confirms the final starting line-ups or match outcome for Wednesday's Super Cup.
- No source details the precise dimensions of the dressing rooms in question or what specific standard was used to determine equivalence.
- No source reports a response from Aston Villa regarding the dressing room arrangements.
- No source provides further detail on the circumstances or reasoning behind Artan's denied US entry during the World Cup.
- No source states whether UEFA made any formal comment on either the dressing room dispute or Artan's appointment.
- BBC News — original — by Nick Mashiter
- Al Jazeera English