Barcelona president Joan Laporta said he was “ashamed and ashamed” following 30,000 Eintracht Frankfurt fans attended the UEFA Europa League quarter-final second leg on Thursday, although only 5,000 tickets were allocated to the away team.
Barcelona unexpectedly exited the tournament once morest his German counterpart, following winger Philip Kostic scored two goals in a 3-2 victory, to cross Frankfurt to the semi-finals thanks to his 4-3 victory on aggregate.
While Barcelona was expecting huge support at Came Nou, ESPN reported that regarding 30,000 Eintracht fans attended the match out of 79,468 spectators at the stadium.
“Honestly what happened today makes me feel ashamed and ashamed. There were many fans of the other team and not many of our fans. I am very sorry for what happened, what we can avoid are certain situations but as for what happened, we have to be tougher,” Laporta told Barcelona TV. We cannot allow these situations to happen.”
Coach Xavi Hernandez described the situation as a “miscalculation” and said that did not help his team, which suffered its first defeat in 16 games in all competitions.
Xavi told a news conference, “I tried to tell the players that the important thing is what happens on the pitch, but logically it might have affected us. It’s very clear, we tried to focus on the game and we didn’t perform well. It has nothing to do with one thing or another. This is not an excuse. It didn’t help us, but on the pitch we weren’t good, we didn’t compete.”