MY ACCOUNT
Barcelona president Joan Laporta has appeared to blame groups of Barcelona fans for an estimated 30,000 Eintracht Frankfurt fans gaining entry to the clubs’ Europa League tie last week.
The second leg of their quarter-final clash saw Frankfurt record a famous 3-2 win after storming into a three-goal lead, as Barcelona were eliminated before swathes of German fans at Camp Nou.
An estimated 30,000 travelling fans gained entry to the stadium despite the Bundesliga club only officially receiving 5,000 tickets for the fixture, leading Laporta to claim he was “ashamed” of the club’s handling of the situation last week.
The incident led to a number of Blaugrana fans boycotting their 1-0 loss to Cadiz on Monday, as the Catalan giants suffered back-to-back home defeats for the first time since April 2003, with some protesting against Laporta prior to kick-off.
The Blaugrana chief, however, has blamed club members for the overwhelming Frankfurt presence, accusing them of selling their tickets to German fans.
“The club is not to blame for what happened against Eintracht, but it is responsible,” Lapota said on Tuesday, speaking at a news conference called to explain the incident.
“A group of members misused their season tickets, which they ceded to German fans.
“It is sad because we love this club, and it is hard to imagine season ticket holders giving their tickets to rival fans. But this happened, and it will be subject to analysis.
“There are around 7,000 members that purchased tickets with discount codes and [those tickets] ended up in German hands. We don’t want it to become a witch hunt, but there is a lot of disappointment and we will look into possibly taking action.
“We didn’t sell tickets to German fans beyond the 5,000 away tickets. Sales from Germany weren’t allowed, and there were many people trying to buy tickets from there. The system of control worked up to a point, but some organised groups were able to breach the mechanisms in place.
“We inherited the system from the previous board. We thought it could work, but we have seen that for special games it doesn’t.
“Tickets will now be non-transferrable for non-domestic matches and high-risk games. We are working on other measures so that it does not happen again.”
Laporta did, however, admit that the club did not handle the situation perfectly, and was thankful to have avoided more serious consequences.
“I am sure we could have done better,” he added. “It concerned us to see so many German fans arriving at the ground, but if we impeded them from entering, we would be talking about more serious incidents.”
Under 58,000 Barcelona fans turned out to see Xavi’s side fall to a demoralising defeat to Cadiz on Monday, one of their lowest attendances since the legendary midfielder returned as head coach.
