Champion League football in the Arctic Circle? Sub-zero temperatures and less than two hours of daylight may await Manchester City, Liverpool, Aston Villa or Arsenal (again)

Sitting inside the Arctic Circle in Northern Norway and based in a town of only around 56,000 people, the town of Bodo may seem an unlikely destination for Champions League football this season.

But Norwegian champions Bodo/Glimt are on the verge of making it out of the qualifying stages of the competition this season and could soon play host to the likes of Real Madrid, Manchester City, Liverpool, Juventus and Bayer Leverkusen.

Bodo/Glimt claimed a 2-1 win over Red Star Belgrade on Tuesday evening, putting them within touching distance of qualifying for the clumsily-named Champions League league phase.

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Bodo/Glimt a potential Champions League away trip like no other

The current Norwegian champions have never made it past the qualifying rounds for UEFA’s marquee competition before, getting knocked out in the first qualifying round in 2021 and suffering extra-time heartbreak at the first hurdle against Dinamo Zagreb in 2022/23.

That did however qualify Bodo/Glimt for the group stage of the Europa League, where they faced Arsenal, PSV and FC Zurich; and they finished second in their Conference League group last season before being knocked out by Dutch giants Ajax.

You won’t be surprised to learn that Bodo play on an artificial pitch: even operating on a summer season, the northern Norwegian climate would make real turf impractical.

The league phase of the Champions League will run until January this season, when overnight lows of -4 degrees centigrade could be expected, with balmy highs of 1 degree.

Actually, we say ‘overnight’, but that’s kind of meaningless: being so close to the north pole, Bodo has both extremes throughout the year, with perpetual daylight at the height of summer and near-constant darkness throughout the winter.

That means that should Champions League football come to Bodo for matchday 6 on December 10-11, there will be no more than 1 hour and 50 minutes of daylight all day, with the sun rising around 11am and going back down just before 1pm. The Northern Lights can be spotted from Bodo...though we imagine the floodlights would put paid to the chances of seeing them from the stadium.

So if you do fly to Bodo (which, as a domestic airport, requires a change elsewhere in Norway)...make the most of your lunch break.

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