Fan ban in Naples in Champions League second leg

PAukenschlag before the Champions League second leg between Eintracht Frankfurt and SSC Napoli: The Italian Interior Ministry will issue an order banning the Napoli club from selling tickets to Eintracht Frankfurt supporters. Eintracht announced this on Tuesday on their website. Accordingly, the Bundesliga soccer club was informed on Monday evening by the European soccer association UEFA about the plans from Italy, which are to be officially announced this Tuesday.

A total of 2,700 tickets for the game on March 15 against the current Serie A leaders (9 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the Champions League and at DAZN) would have granted Eintracht according to UEFA regulations, including 2400 in the guest sector. So far, the Frankfurters had assumed that they would be able to pass these tickets on to their supporters as usual. Among other things, those responsible for the trip to southern Italy had planned six fan planes.

“This is a first and unique occurrence in European football and a sad day. Influencing the competition by arguing about the security situation is, in our view, a distortion of competition,” commented Eintracht board member Philipp Reschke on the latest developments. “We don’t get any tickets for the game because SSC Napoli isn’t allowed to sell tickets to us.” Eintracht has “no lever that we could use” to bring about a change in the Italian side’s approach in the short term.

It was initially unclear whether the decision of the Italian Ministry of the Interior was a direct reaction to the incidents in the first leg in Frankfurt. When the two teams met for the first time in this year’s Champions League season, which Eintracht lost 2-0 in February, it was closed several incidents with the fan camps both teams came. Nine people were briefly taken into custody at the time.