UEFA Champions League winners Manchester City defeated UEFA Europa League holders Sevilla and won their first-ever UEFA Super Cup at the Georgios Karaiskakis Stadium in Piraeus, Greece on Wednesday, August 16th.
The first goal was scored by Sevilla’s Youssef En-Nesyri, twenty-five minutes into the game, but Manchester City’s Palmer equaled the score at sixty-three minutes, and the game was tied 1-1 at normal time.
Per Super Cup regulations, the match went straight to a penalty shoot-out without extra time to determine the winner.
Manchester City eventually won its first-ever Super Cup with 5-4 shoot-outs.
The traditional curtain-raiser to the new European season was the first UEFA club competition final to be held in Greece since AC Milan beat Liverpool 2-1 in the 2006/07 UEFA Champions League final in Athens.
Super Cup final brought football fans from across Europe to Piraeus
Named after a military commander of the Greek War of Independence who was mortally wounded in the area, the Georgios Karaiskakis Stadium in Piraeus, which hosts the 2023 Super Cup final, is the home ground of Olympiacos football club.
The stadium was completely rebuilt to stage the football tournament at the 2004 Olympics and now has a capacity of just over thirty-three thousand.
Besides football games, it has hosted concerts by Rihanna, Aerosmith, 50 Cent, and the Sex Pistols among others.
That winning moment! 🤩 pic.twitter.com/F776k51fbz
— Manchester City (@ManCity) August 16, 2023
This week, the city of Piraeus welcomed football fans from across Europe with free entertainment events celebrating the city’s hosting of the prestigious football match.
Hundreds of families with children and football fans from Britain and Spain flocked to Korai Square and the Piraeus Municipal Theater plaza on Tuesday and Wednesday to be photographed with the three trophies, that of the Champions League, Europa League, and Super Cup games. They also greeted Greek football players who were part of the Greek national team that won the Europe 2004 cup.
UEFA Foundation for Children, Action Aid Hellas, Cosmos FC, and A Ball for All funded activities that were also addressed to children living in facilities.
UEFA Super Cup competition more than half a century old
UEFA Super Cup is an annual fixture contested by the reigning champions of the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Europa League.
It was started in the early 1970s by Dutch reporter Anton Witkamp as a competition to decide definitively the top club in Europe.
After fifteen consecutive Super Cups being played at the Louis II Stadium in Monaco between 1998 and 2012, the Super Cup is now played at various stadiums, similar to the finals of the Champions League and the Europa League.
It was started with the 2013 edition, which was played at Eden Stadium in Prague of the Czech Republic.
The Georgios Karaiskakis Stadium is the eleventh venue to stage the UEFA Super Cup after Prague, Cardiff, Tbilisi, Trondheim, Skopje, Tallinn, Istanbul, Budapest, Belfast, and Helsinki.
The most successful teams in the history of the competition are Barcelona, AC Milan, and Real Madrid, which have won the trophy five times each.
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