The power died just as the ground began to fill. In the police control room at one of Europe's most famous football clubs, the radios went silent, CCTV monitors went dark, and exit gates froze – an outage that threatened to cancel the biggest match of the season.
Club officials sent an electrician, but the news was bleak: a recent upgrade had burned out, and a fix would take days. Cancelling the match meant a hefty fine and, with a fevered crowd already flooding in from the streets, the risk of ugly scenes if thousands of fans were turned away.
“A tech support worker saved a major football match by using a newly installed UPS after power failure.”
The officer in charge and the stadium operations director held a terse discussion. A portable generator was ruled out. Then George, one half of the club's two-person tech team, spoke up.
“I asked the officer what minimum setup would make it safe to let the game proceed,” George later told The Register. “The response was that if we could centrally open the exit gates at the end of the match, or in the event of an evacuation, and get the CCTV and radio working, the match could go ahead.”
George had just that week installed a new 4U uninterruptible power supply (UPS). He connected the critical systems – and the match went ahead.
Decades later, the 2026 FIFA World Cup continues with England still in with a chance. And at VivaTech in Paris, BBC’s Shiona McCallum is exploring the latest tech that may soon be in homes and workplaces, including the data centres that underpin modern life. As she notes, data centres are central but face challenges – a reminder that even the smallest piece of infrastructure, like a lone UPS, can sometimes save the day.