On Thursday evening, the Camp Nou felt firmly in Frankfurt’s hands – much to the displeasure of Barça supporters, who vented their anger with a protest action after half-time.
After half-time, with Eintracht already leading 2-0, a conspicuously large number of seats remained empty in the FC Barcelona stadium – and this was where the hard core of the Blaugrana supporters usually hang out. It was a protest by the Barça fans, who could not understand why so many Frankfurt fans were in the stadium.
Officially, the SGE had only been allocated 5,000 tickets for the game, but in the end there were far more who witnessed what was, from a Hessian point of view, a wonderful as well as historic evening of football on the ground. “30,000 in the city, 25,000 in the stadium, that’s sensational,” Frankfurt’s sports director Markus Krösche told RTL after the game, praising the ingenuity of their own fans: “Our fans are resourceful, they tried everything to get in. We turned an away game into a home game. That’s sensational. “
That Barça would experience an unusual atmosphere should have been clear at the latest when Marc-André ter Stegen was booed during the warm-up – in the home stadium. Barcelona already knew that something was brewing, because, as the Marca reports, Barça had even stopped online ticket sales early to prevent a massive presence of German fans at the last minute. But it was too late, the tickets had already been sold.
FCB coach Xavi also knew this: “We are checking what happened. Of course we can’t control which tickets were sold,” said the 42-year-old, who knew what the enormous support meant for Eintracht: “Of course it was a big help for them.”
At the SGE, of course, they were immensely happy about the support. “Everyone who was able to be here today is happy and will never forget this evening,” said coach Oliver Glasner and went into raptures: “These emotional highlights, you have them in sport, in football. You can’t buy them with any money in the world – and that’s wonderful. “
