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The Europa League second leg between Poland’s champions, Lech Poznan, and the Faroese champions, KÍ Klaksvík, on Thursday evening is at risk, with the Polish team struggling to reach the Faroe Islands on time due to heavy fog.
Lech won 1-0 in the first leg in Poznan after a late goal from the Ivorian striker Yannick Agnero, but are locked in a race against time to reach the islands for Thursday’s return leg, scheduled for 6.30pm local time.
The Polish team have been trying to reach Vágar – the Faroe Islands’ only airport – for two days, but heavy fog is making a safe landing difficult.
On Wednesday, the Polish team were kept waiting for hours, with an increasingly frustrated head coach, Niels Frederiksen, captured telling players that they could not “just postpone, postpone, and postpone” their departure and would need to make a call on this at some point.
“If we fly tomorrow morning and play tomorrow then we will have to leave quite early, so we still have the possibility to rest,” he told players on Wednesday.
Lech’s team boarded the plane again early on Thursday morning – with the club’s social media prematurely celebrating that they were “cleared for takeoff” – only to then be kept in a holding pattern off the west coast of Norway for 40 minutes before diverting to Bergen.
Their flight was for some time the most watched globally on the Flightradar tracking service as thousands of Lech fans rushed to follow their adventures.
Lech are locked in talks with Uefa on whether the fixture should go ahead or be rescheduled to give them more time to reach the Faroe Islands.
KÍ Klaksvík usually advise visiting teams to arrive two days before the game to factor in potential weather disruptions.
They also encourage clubs to fly with the Faroese national carrier, Atlantic Airways, given their experience in landing in tricky conditions. Three of the airline’s planes landed on the island on Thursday morning before the weather conditions worsened again. Lech, however, chose a private charter service, Comlux.
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The Faroe Islands are notorious for difficult weather affecting visiting teams. Two opponents of another Faroese side playing in the Conference League, NSÍ Runavík, were also hit by delays this summer, forcing late matchday arrivals.
NSÍ Runavík are set to play FC Lugano this afternoon, after the Swiss team wisely arrived on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Lech’s domestic rivals, Legia Warsaw, mocked their struggles, taking to social media to advise their next league opponents, Radomiak Radom, to plan their travel well ahead and use public transport, with a mock-up of a bus tracking service.
Lech eventually departed Bergen for Vágar on Thursday afternoon, confirming that if all goes well the match will kick off at 8.45pm local time – more than two hours later than planned.
