Supporting your team isn’t cheap at the best of times, with a new shirt to purchase and a season ticket to splash out on, but for those who support teams who travel to Europe to compete in the Champions League, those figures go up even further.
Whether it’s expensive flights to the far-flung corners of Europe, or trips to the more expensive cities, fans of each club will be expected to fork out a pretty penny in order to watch their heroes in action on the continent.
In this season’s Champions League, the defending champions Real Madrid have got off to a sub-standard start, with a 3-0 home win over Roma being followed up with a 1-0 loss away to CSKA Moscow and a disappointing 2-1 win at home to Viktoria Plzen. Manchester City are the favourites, priced at 9/2 with the defending champions coming in at a price of 10/1.
City were faced with a relatively easy group when the draw was made, but they got off to the worst of starts, losing 2-1 to Lyon at the Etihad Stadium. They recovered in the following match, winning 2-1 away to 1899 Hoffenheim, although it took an 87th-minute goal from David Silva to secure all three points.
Their most recent match saw City travel to Shakhtar Donetsk, a club that had never lost at home to English opposition in a European tournament. Goals from David Silva, Aymeric Laporte and Bernardo Silva soon put an end to that streak.
Last season’s Champions League runners-up Liverpool have been less fortunate with the group draw, being drawn against French Ligue 1 champions PSG, Italian Serie A runners-up Napoli and Serbian SuperLiga winners Red Star Belgrade.
Despite being in one of the toughest groups, Liverpool got off to the best possible start, defeating PSG 3-2 at Anfield. They followed this up with an away defeat to Napoli, but got their European campaign back on track with a 4-0 home win against Red Star Belgrade.
Tottenham and Manchester United both face uncertain futures in the Champions League, with Spurs having lost two and drawn one of their opening three matches, while United have won one, lost one and drawn one. Tottenham have the unenviable task of travelling to Barcelona knowing they need to win. United, on the other hand, have tough games away to Valencia and Juventus.
The infographic below details the cost of travelling to these away fixtures for the fans.
