Brits hope for momentum shift in America’s Cup challenger series

Britain's INEOS Team UK is hoping for a momentum shift in its America's Cup challenger series final against Italy's Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli as a coronavirus lockdown in host city Auckland has led to a longer than expected break in racing.

Luna Rossa leads the first-toseven-win series 4-0 after winning two races Saturday and Sunday on each of the first two days of the Prada Cup final. Racing was due to resume with two races on Wednesday but a small community outbreak of COVID19 has seen the series delayed at least by a day as Auckland locks down for 72 hours.

While no new cases were reported Monday, the lockdown may be extended until further community transmission can be ruled out. That could see the challenger final, due to end Feb. 22, further disrupted.

The teams have no choice but to use the available time to review their performances to date and, in Team UK's case, to find a way to close an obvious gap on Luna Rossa.

"We have to break that momentum," Team UK skipper Ben Ainslie said. "In sport momentum is pretty powerful and it has been with the Italians. We have to turn that around. We need to regroup and come back stronger."

Ainslie knows better than most that remarkable changes of fortune are possible in the America's Cup. He was a teammate of Luna Rossa helmsman James Spithill with Oracle Team USA which in 2013 rallied from 8-1 down in the first-to-nine win America's Cup match against Team New

Zealand to win 9-8.

"We know we're up against really tough opposition, that was our expectation," Ainslee said. "But in a decent breeze we've got a boat that can do it so it's down to us. We've just got to go out sail hard, get stuck in and we can do it."

Spithill agreed.

"Given what I went through in the past I'm the last person in the world to be counting my chickens," he said. "Ben and I went through that together, so we know better than anyone. It doesn't matter whether you are four up or four down."

Ainslie hopes stronger winds later in the series might play into Team UK's hands.

"As soon as we get a bit of breeze we have a pretty even boat race," he said. "We just need to up our game and do the boat proud.

"It's very subtle between success and failure. It's split-second and not much in it. We need to make sure that we keep going through our processes but start getting it right when it counts."

German teams hosting English opponents in Hungary. Arsenal and Benfica playing in Italy and Greece. Atletico Madrid entertaining Chelsea in Romania nearly 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) from home.

The coronavirus has shaken up the Champions League and Europa League again, causing five games this week to move to neutral venues across the continent, with more relocations to come.

It's a confusing series of workarounds to national border restrictions on the spread of virus variants. Some politicians are worried by what they see as privileged soccer stars evading the spirit of the law.

"Professional soccer, and other sports too, seem to be living in another cosmos where consideration is a foreign word," Dagmar Freitag, who chairs the German parliament's sports committee, told radio broadcaster DLF on Saturday.

Her concern comes as Leipzig prepares to host Liverpool at the Puskas Arena in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, on Tuesday. German authorities refused permission for Jurgen Klopp's team to enter the country because of the spread of a coronavirus variant in Britain. Next week, Borussia Mönchengladbach will use the same venue to entertain Manchester City.

Meeting in a neutral country is a handy solution for the clubs and UEFA, which is desperate to keep the European schedule on track. Criticism in Germany grew louder after Bayern Munich went to Qatar for the Club World Cup and Thomas Müller contracted the virus. He flew home in a protective suit on a private jet before entering quarantine.

Coronavirus variants in Britain are also the reason for Chelsea playing Atletico next week in Bucharest, where European knockout games have been a rarity since Steaua Bucharest's European Cup-winning heyday in the 1980s.

Liverpool, City and Chelsea are scheduled to play at home in the second-leg games, but that could change if Germany and Spain insist on clubs entering quarantine on their return home.

The Europa League has a similarly scrambled schedule. Virus variants are spreading in Britain and Portugal, so Arsenal and Benfica's round-of-32 games had both legs switched to neutral venues — the Stadio Olimpico in Rome and Olympiacos' stadium in Piraeus.

On top of that, Real Sociedad is hosting Manchester United in Italy, Tottenham is visiting Austrian club Wolfsberg in Hungary and Norwegian travel restrictions have moved Molde's game against Hoffenheim to Villarreal's stadium in Spain.

Next month comes another test for UEFA. World Cup qualifiers will pull players out of their club bubbles and see them travel the continent for up to three national-team games.

The financial might of the English Premier League means dozens of national teams have players resident in Britain who might face entry bans elsewhere. Leaving them out of squads would diminish the appeal of the games and could tip the competitive balance, but moving or postponing more than a handful of fixtures could prove extremely difficult.