Real Madrid’s first five; Alfredo di Stefano and Ferenc Puskas lighting up Hampden Park; Eusebio; Herrera’s Inter; the Lisbon Lions; Matt Busby’s night; Cruyff’s Ajax; Franz and Gerd’s Bayern; Paisley; Cloughie; Steaua Bucharest sorting it on penalties; that Milan side; Kluivert at seventeen; and Solskjaer won it; Zidane’s volley; those six minutes in Istanbul; Barcelona at Wembley; la decima and another Real dynasty. That’s the bar folks. Welcome, everyone, to live coverage of the 2021 Champions League Final from the Estadio do Dragao in Porto.

There's quite an atmosphere in Porto as 'Blue is the Colour' blares around the stadium. It's been said a lot lately, but my oh my it's a joy to see fans in a stadium again, particularly for a game of this stature.

Guardiola is asked about his line-up in the pre-match interview. He simply shrugs at the observation that it's a very attacking line-up; he looks relaxed and confident. As for Tuchel, he seems horizontally laid back and ready to go too; he admits it was a tough decision to leave out Christian Pulisic, but is happy with his side and unflustered by City's selection. 'We are up for it,' he signs off.

Can Chelsea do it again? Their Drogba-inspired victory of 2012 was the greatest moment in their history, and their modern record in European club competition is mightily impressive. Both of their Big Cup finals to date have been to penalties; after the never ending story in Gdansk on Wednesday, could we be heading to that mechanism as a decider tonight?

This really is a big deal for City, as ubiquitous celebrity super fan Noel Gallagher has just intimated in an interview with Des Kelly. Just as Chelsea's new era built to their victory in this competition in 2012, so City have been aiming for this since 2008. They've got domestic football in a figure four leg lock, and given the current state of the other big clubs in Europe a victory here could usher in an era of dominance in this competition too.

A quick recap on how it'll go tonight - if it's level after 90 minutes we'll have extra-time, and if it's still level after that we go to penalties. Both teams have 12 players on the bench, and can use five in normal time and a further one during the extra half-hour if we get there. Your referee is Antonio Mateu Lahoz.

Euro history: while it’s tempting to think that the bricks of Chelsea and City’s European reputations were only laid when Roman Abramovich and Sheikh Mansour started tipping money into the clubs, the foundations were put in much earlier. City were the fourth English club to win a major European trophy when they landed the Cup Winners’ Cup in 1970, and Chelsea the fifth when they picked it up a year later after knocking City out in the semi-finals.

In the Big Cup, City had their first crack in 1968-69 but were eliminated in the first round by Fenerbahce. Chelsea should have been the first English team to play in any European competition when their 1954-55 title winning side were invited to enter the inaugural European Cup, but they declined the invitation. They also won the Cup Winners’ Cup and European Super Cup in 1998 and later completed the set of European titles by winning the Europa League in 2013 and again in 2019.

It's hard to overstate the enormity of this match tonight. In either of its guises as the European Champions Clubs Cup or the Uefa Champions League, this is the 66th final of Europe’s flagship club competition and one of the most important games in world football. It will be screened live in over 200 countries, to an audience estimated to be close on 400 million. If you do bits in this match, you’ll be enshrined in the annals of football history.

If you’ve read any think piece on the final at all, you’ll know already that Tuchel’s Chelsea seem to have the wood on Guardiola’s City. It was Chelsea that won the FA Cup semi-final between the two last month, before blagging a crucial 2-1 victory at the Etihad three weeks ago. How big a factor will that be tonight? Despite those victories, Chelsea’s recent form is patchy; they lost the FA Cup final to Leicester City, and only just made it into the top four on the final day of the Premier League season. City meanwhile have bagged the Premier League title and the League Cup in the last six weeks.

It's fair to say that Guardiola's selection has caused several eyebrows to go north. It looks like Gundogan will be the nominal holding player of the midfield three, and it's a big call in a game of this magnitude.

As for Chelsea, the main take homes are that Kante and Mendy are fit as both were concerns during the week. Now that Tuchel has seen City's team sheet, you wonder how that might change the team talk in the next fifty minutes or so.

So, what to make of those teams? It's an intriguing match-up, with City's ball-literate front six up against an axis of Jorginho and Kante in Chelsea's midfield that allows natural width for their full-backs. It's worth pointing out just how watertight both teams have been at the back in their respective campaigns; both kept eight clean sheets in 12 matches, and have conceded just four goals each in the competition so far.

It's a 3-4-3 for Chelsea, pretty much as expected and with Havertz and Mount either side of Werner up top. Chilwell and Azpilicueta will provide the width ahead of the back three.

That's quite a line-up from Guardiola, and indicates that City are really going for this. It's a de facto strikerless formation, and with Rodri or Fernandinho on the bench there's no anchoring midfielder in there either. They want the ball, and all of it.

Through the sun and rain, here’s Chelsea:

The team news is hot off the wires. First up, Manchester City:

One other thing we can’t get away from is that this is one of the more unpopular finals in recent years; both of these clubs signed up to the short-lived hoot that was the European Super League, which collapsed inside three days and left legacy fan pie all over the faces of those involved.

Their breakaway cohorts Manchester United had their noses bent out of shape by Villareal on Wednesday, but one of these two will walk away with one of the biggest prizes in football tonight. Will UEFA hand down any punishment to those involved in the ESL shenanigans? Given that they took the chance to pass through their own incredibly damaging reforms to the Champions League while the world was distracted I wouldn’t bet the farm on it, but we wait and watch.

As for Chelsea, they’ve had to sort out the top end of La Liga to get here. They topped their group ahead of Sevilla, back in the Frank Lampard days that now seem aeons ago, before knocking out Atletico Madrid to reach the last eight. After a brief change of scenery to eliminate Porto, they then arm-wrestled Real Madrid into submission at Stamford Bridge to reach the final.

And you ask yourself well, how did they get here? City won their group ahead of Porto, before dismissing a pair of Borussia’s – Monchengladbach and Dortmund – to reach the last four. Once there, a serious flex of the muscles sorted out Paris St Germain home and away to book their place in tonight’s final.

So, who do you fancy? City are the favourites tonight, and their trophy-collecting juggernaut are potentially 90 minutes from adding the one that has eluded them to date. For Chelsea, this is familiar territory; it's their third final in the last 13 years, and each one has been reached despite changing managers midway through the campaign. with so much riding on it, this match is rarely a blowout; add in the familiarity of both sides with each other, and we could have a tense evening on the cards here in Porto.

Tonight we’ll see the third all-English final in the history of the competition, as Manchester City and Chelsea square up nose-to-nose for the biggest prize in European club football. It’s City’s first final after years of hovering around in the last eight, while Chelsea were champions in 2012 and runners up in 2008. Pep Guardiola is back in the final for the first time in a decade, while Thomas Tuchel is looking to avenge the disappointment of seeing his Paris St Germain team lose last year’s final to Bayern Munich.

The game also marks the end of a season that has felt both short and long, at times both exhilarating and exhausting. The COVID-19 pandemic has hung over football as it has everything else for over a year now, but unlike the final last year we’ll have the glorious sight of fans in the stadium this time; the relocation from Istanbul to Porto means that 16,500 lucky punters will get to see it live.