UEFA boss Aleksander Ceferin threatened on Tuesday to punish clubs and their cities for refusing to welcome supporters of opposing teams.
UEFA boss Aleksander Ceferin threatened on Tuesday to sanction clubs and their cities refusing to welcome supporters of opposing teams, on the eve of the Champions League round of 16 second leg between Napoli and Frankfurt which will be played without German fans. .
Following a ping-pong between the Italian authorities and Eintracht Frankfurt, amid fears of overflow, none of the 2,700 places initially allocated to visiting supporters in the Maradona stadium in Naples will be occupied.
Interviewed on German television, Aleksander Ceferin spoke of a “intolerable situationand judged this ban as “a bad decision”. In particular, he considered a new rule. “If something like this were to happen, then the clubs would not play” in the cities that issued the sanctions.
Champions League: deprived of travel, Frankfurt supporters chamber the Neapolitans
On March 8, the prefecture of the city of Campania had initially prohibited Napoli from selling these places to people domiciled in Germany for fear of disturbing public order. After a reversal by the courts of this decision, at the request of Eintracht, a new ban was pronounced, this time only for people domiciled in Frankfurt.
The UEFA boss found it unacceptable “that the Italian authorities simply decide to ban the supporters“. UEFA, he said, has “attached to the legal action brought by Eintracht Frankfurt”.
Eintracht and their supporters are under close surveillance by UEFA after the pitch was invaded and pyrotechnics were used in their Waldstadion after qualifying for the Europa League final against West Ham in May. Last September, during the trip to Marseille in the Champions League, incidents also broke out between supporters of the two clubs.