BERLIN (AP) — The Latest from the Champions League final:
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7:36 p.m.
Some thrive, others wilt under the intense pressure of club football’s biggest game, the Champions League final. Paul Pogba looks like he can’t wait.
The Juventus midfielder, chewing what looks like a plastic coffee-stirrer, sported an ear-to-ear grin as he wandered onto the Olympic Stadium pitch. He whipped out his mobile phone to record the scene for posterity and went over to greet a section of Juventus fans.
Neymar — a prong in the Barcelona attacking trio, with Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez, that has scored 120 goals so far this season — is looking cool as a cucumber, too. Headphones on, the Brazilian sang to himself as he came off the Barcelona bus. Samba, perhaps.
Down in the locker rooms, the players’ jerseys await. Video here: https://twitter.com/FCBarcelona/status/607235500638912512
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7:15 p.m.
The venue for the Champions League final, Berlin’s Olympic Stadium, is steeped in history, some of it very dark.
The Nazis built it as their showpiece arena to milk the propaganda value of the 1936 Olympic Games. Adolf Hitler himself selected the design by brothers Werner and Walter March.
But sharecroppers’ son Jesse Owens stole the Olympic show. Winning four gold medals, the black American made a mockery of Nazi claims of Aryan supremacy. Hitler refused to enter the stadium when Owens competed.
Barcelona and Juventus fans are flocking to the stadium on a road named in his honor. Owens is also remembered — along with other gold medalists from 1936 — on a stone plaque carved with their names. Here’s a photo: https://twitter.com/johnleicester/status/607202230261972992
After the Allied victory in 1945, British troops took over the arena. In 2002, during renovation work, a 250-kilogram (550-pound) British bomb was plucked from beneath the lower ring of seats.
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6:57 p.m.
Downtown, at the Brandenburg Gate that was on the dividing line between East and West Berlin during the Cold War, it is party time, with a capital ‘P.’
Fans of Juventus and Barcelona, the Champions League finalists, are filling the air with chants, bouncing up and down in unison, waving flags and quenching their thirst with beer on the German capital’s hottest day of the year so far, with temperatures into the high 20s Celsius (above 80 Fahrenheit.)
Many Barca fans have been letting their hair down at Breitscheidplatz in the west of Berlin, while Juve fans massed at Alexanderplatz in the east. One of them set off a flare, sending others scampering for safety. Police officers are patrolling in numbers around the city.
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6:45 p.m.
Sick of FIFA corruption? Itching for Sepp Blatter to make good on his promise to leave soccer’s governing body? In which case, let the football — not its sordid politics — take your mind off the unpleasantness for a few hours.
The Champions League final is two hours away. Thousands of sun-roasted but expectant fans are thronging at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin for the ultimate showcase of club football and are painting the town Juventus white and black and Barcelona red and blue.
As these pictures from our Associated Press photographers show, spirits are high: http://tinyurl.com/nprvnvu , http://tinyurl.com/n9mbn24
One quarter of the stadium looks like a copy of the Camp Nou, Barcelona’s stadium, with seats in the club’s colors and writing out its slogan: “Mes Que Un Club” — “More than a club.”
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