Newcastle United will have to take the long road in this season’s Champions League.
A 1-1 draw with Paris Saint-Germain on matchday eight last month meant Eddie Howe’s side finished 12th in the league phase, short of the top eight who progressed directly to the round of 16. They now face a two-leg play-off against Azerbaijani side Qarabag to reach the knockout stage proper, with the away game tonight (Wednesday).
It adds two more fixtures to an already congested calendar — while their journey to Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, where Qarabag play their games, is the longest ever made by an English club in the competition.
The 5,061-mile (8,100-kilometre) round-trip from Newcastle narrowly edges out Chelsea’s two previous journeys to face Qarabag, including a 2-2 draw in this season’s league phase.
Of Chelsea’s visits, their match there in the 2017-18 season was the slightly longer journey of the two, as it was played at Azerbaijan’s national ground, the Baku Olympic Stadium, which is further east in the city than this season’s venue, the Tofiq Bahramov Republican Stadium.
Newcastle’s league-phase schedule had been forgiving in terms of geography, with only Arsenal travelling fewer miles across the eight matches. But this trip means they leapfrog the other five Premier League sides competing in this season’s tournament for distance travelled.
Long-distance flights have been a recurring theme in the 2025-26 Champions League. By the end of the league phase, clubs had travelled around 313,131 miles — more than the total distance covered in any previous edition of the competition.
Part of that is a natural consequence of the expanded format introduced last season. The league phase now features 36 teams and 144 matches, more than the entire set of 125 games played in 2023-24, the final campaign under the old structure that featured eight groups of four.
But it is not only this expansion that has inflated the competition’s air miles.
This season has already seen clubs log 100,000 miles more than last year’s total, a figure that includes the longest journey in the competition’s history: Kazakhstan’s Kairat making an 8,594-mile round trip to face Sporting CP in Portugal’s capital Lisbon for their opening match of the league phase.
Kairat are the easternmost side ever to compete in the Champions League, in a tournament that has stretched the length and breadth of the continent. It is little surprise, then, that their trip to Lisbon is the longest on record, with Portugal the westernmost nation to play in the Champions League group stage/league phase.
Meanwhile, Norwegian side Bodo/Glimt — who face Serie A side Inter in the play-offs — are the northernmost club in the competition, based inside the Arctic Circle. Apart from previous participants from Israel, eliminated Cypriot side Pafos are the southernmost team to qualify in the tournament’s history.
These journeys to Europe’s limits (and beyond in some cases — only a small western part of Kazakhstan is considered to be part of the continent, with the rest in Asia) raise valid questions about the competition’s carbon footprint, but has travel fatigue manifested itself on the pitch?
Turkey provides an interesting case study.
Manchester United were the first English club to travel there for a Champions League fixture, facing Galatasaray in a 1993 second-round match. That game is vividly remembered for its ferocious atmosphere, infamously foreshadowed by a banner greeting the United players at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport that read: ‘Welcome to Hell’.
United drew 0-0 on the night, 3-3 on aggregate, and were eliminated on away goals, kick-starting a middling run of results for English sides in Turkey. Across 20 away Champions League matches there, Premier League clubs have recorded seven wins, six draws and seven defeats.
Sir Alex Ferguson emerges from the tunnel for Manchester United’s 1993 game in Istanbul against Galatasaray (Ross Kinnaird/EMPICS via Getty Images)
Part of that record is undoubtedly shaped by the intimidating environment generated by the home supporters, and by away fixtures being statistically tougher, regardless of venue. But, compared with their results at home against clubs from the same countries, English sides have fared much worse in away matches against Eastern European opposition.
The graphic below shows Premier League win rates in the Champions League, split between home and away fixtures against clubs from across Europe. The biggest swing comes against Ukrainian teams.
No side from Ukraine has ever won in 20 Champions League visits to England (they have drawn three), and English clubs have won just 26 per cent of the return fixtures out there.
A similar pattern exists against Greek opposition. Arsenal’s 3-2 defeat to Olympiacos in the 2015-16 group stage remains the only home loss for an English side to a Greek one in the Champions League, but the balance shifts once sides from England board those three-to-four-hour flights to that part of south-eastern Europe.
By contrast, Swiss clubs perhaps take the country’s reputation for neutrality a little too literally in the Champions League. Switzerland is the only nation (with a minimum of 10 home and away games) where Premier League sides boast a higher win rate away than at home.
If any club is well versed in long-distance away days, it is Newcastle — domestically, at least. Their St James’ Park home is the northernmost stadium in the Premier League, and, along with north-east rivals Sunderland, they routinely face the longest journeys in the division.
Not that familiarity has equipped them for the rigours of such travel. They have won just three of their 13 away league matches this season. After their date in Baku, Newcastle still have close to 3,000 miles to travel for their remaining Premier League fixtures this season, more than any other club.
For tonight’s game, any fatigue Newcastle feel is unlikely to bridge the gulf in quality between the sides. In their final league-phase fixture, Qarabag were beaten 6-0 at Anfield by Liverpool.
Their journey to Baku may have been long and turbulent, but the game itself should be smooth sailing for Howe and company.
