Barça keen to avoid another ‘Eintracht situation’ for United visit
The Catalan club are putting plans into place to ensure that travelling supporters cannot buy up tickets as was the case last season when Frankfurt visited.
FC Barcelona face Manchester United in the first leg of the playoff to gain access to the Europa League Round of 16 on 16 February at Camp Nou. Anxious to avoid a similar situation to last years Europa League game when more then 30,000 German fans populated the stands, the Catalan club have put together a series of initiatives to ensure that these scenes are not repeated.
The club’s Social Area VP Elena Fort has created an internal cross-sectional committee in order to establish ticketing control and have blocked computers with an English IP address as a first deterrent. The number of tickets that can be purchased by any individual has been reduced from six to four with no under-age tickets set to be made available. The club have also drastically cut back on the sales to ‘tour operators’ and any season ticket holder who decides to sell their match-ticket has to provide full details of the recipient with the new holder having to bring written confirmation of the acquisition to the game.
The Old Trafford side will be given a ticket allocation of 4,700 for the fixture at the 99,354-seater Nou Camp stadium on 16 February but it’s anticipated that many more ticketless United fans will make the trip to the Catalan capital.