Liverpool today have asked fans without tickets not to travel to Basel for the Europa League Final on May 18.
The club released a statement on the official website, strongly urging the unlucky ones to stay behind.
“Following meetings with UEFA and the Local Organising Committee in Basel on Friday, LFC is strongly advising fans not to travel to Basel unless they have an official match ticket,” the club said.
But Liverpool have been utterly stitched up as a club and fanbase with our ticket allocation. The stadium holds 38,000, which is tiny for a major European stadium.
As a result, only 10,236 tickets have been released for Liverpool, but only a small section of these will go to actual, match-going fans. The rest are reserved for corporate, and shockingly, an old arrangement made under the Hicks and Gillett ownership means 2,000 of our allocation will go to ex-shareholders – regardless of them having gone to a match at any time over the past nine years (via the Telegraph).
In opposition to the club statement, Klopp encouraged supporters to head to Switzerland for the Sevilla match, ticket or not!
“I have been to Basel one or two times, it is a wonderful stadium and a wonderful city,” he said, reported by ESPN.
“It is even worth going there without having a ticket for the game to be around the stadium and enjoy yourself and enjoy life as a Liverpool supporter, and that is what we should do and not worry or think about the size of the stadium or tickets you can get.”
Here at EOTK, we tend to agree with Klopp. There’s no way only 5,000 odd Liverpool fans will be travelling to Basel. The city will be a full of Scousers, and the only people who need criticising are UEFA.
Why organise a final in such a small stadium? It’s bafflingly stupid, but that pretty much sums up most of their decisions.