The Philadelphia Eagles welcome the Kansas City Chiefs: When the Super Bowl is played in the USA on Monday night (kickoff: 12:30 a.m.), millions of fans will again be following the spectacle in the NFL on the screen. With Patrick Mahomes (Chiefs) and Jalen Hurts (Eagles) the two best quarterbacks of the year are facing each other, Mahomes was just named the league’s most valuable player of the year. But it’s also a game for the history books, as Hurts and Mahomes will see two black quarterbacks face off in the finals for the first time in NFL history. Why did it take so long? “There are many reasons for this and probably none of them are good,” said NFL boss Roger Goodell at a press conference during the week.
The Super Bowl will once again be hosted by State Farm Stadium in Arizona. The finals took place here in 2008 and 2015, but this time there is something special: For the first time, quarterback legend Tom Brady, who recently retired, will not be on the pitch for the final in Glendale. In 2008, the hunt for the perfect season without a single Finals loss ended in bitter defeat for Tom Brady and the New England Patriots. In 2015, however, Brady was allowed to stretch the Vince Lombardi Trophy, the NFL championship title, into the evening sky over Arizona – even if the Patriots’ reaching the final was overshadowed by a scandal.
In Phoneix and neighboring Glendale, where the stadium is located, everyone will be eagerly waiting for the home Cardinals to play successfully again at some point. The Cardinals ended the season as the third-worst team in the league with only four wins, and superstar JJ Watt also declared his retirement afterwards. Bitter for the supporters of the Cardinals: Since the construction in 2006, the team has only played four playoff games here, only one more than the Super Bowl in Arizona took place