As many as 20,000 West Ham fans are expected to descend on Prague ahead of Wednesday’s Europa Conference League final against Fiorentina, despite Uefa only allocating 5,780 tickets to the club for their biggest game in decades.
It will be the first time the Hammers have played in a major European final since losing to Anderlecht in the 1976 Cup Winners’ Cup and their first appearance in a major final of any description since the FA Cup defeat to Liverpool in 2006.
And yet less than 10 per cent of the London Stadium’s 62,500 capacity will be present in the West Ham end at Eden Arena on Wednesday – the ground that Slavia Prague calls home and which holds just 20,800 spectators.
Uefa described it as “compact” when confirming it would play hosting duties and have raised the minimum capacity for next season’s stadium to 30,000 after encountering similar issues last year when other well-supported clubs – Roma and Feyenoord – played at a 22,500 seater stadium in Albania’s capital Tirana.
Thousands of supporters making the journey to Prague will be unable to watch a potentially once-in-a-lifetime event live and will have to make do with catching the action elsewhere, including at the designated fan park in the Czech capital’s Letna Park. Fiorentina’s supporters will congregate at Vystaviste, a multi-purpose venue two kilometres away.
“You’d like common sense to prevail on these types of things,” former West Ham star Joe Cole tells i. “I think last year when Roma and Feyenoord played that should have made Uefa think about how much football means to people. People want to be there to watch their team play.
“The only sad thing [about the final] is that there is not going to be more than 6,000 fans getting tickets. It should be at a place like Wembley. This game would have filled out Wembley, the Nou Camp, the Bernabeu, anywhere, it really could.”
The police operation has been ramped up considerably in anticipation of the thousands of fans arriving in Prague from London, Florence and everywhere else in an attempt to avoid a repeat of the ugly scenes that marred West Ham’s win over AZ in Alkmaar last month.
Friends and family members of West Ham’s players were attacked by balaclava-clad fans after the final whistle, with AZ admitting that the incident had brought “shame” on the club.
The authorities in Prague will also be mindful of the violent clashes that occurred between Fiorentina and FC Twente ultras ahead of the clubs’ Conference League play-off last August.
Over 10,000 police officers from all over the Czech Republic will be deployed in Prague, while their counterparts from the UK’s Metropolitan Police and Football Policing Unit will also be on the ground to provide assistance.
Stel Kyriacou, a representative from the West Ham United Supporters’ Club, is one of the lucky ones to have got his hands on the hottest ticket in town and is hopeful that things will run more smoothly in Prague.
“It sounds like there may be around 20,000 fans going out there,” Kyriacou, who also runs the West Ham Voice YouTube channel, says.
“West Ham fans just want to get the atmosphere and it sounds to me as if Prague will be taken over! Certainly last season when we went out to Seville, Lyon and Frankfurt in the Europa League, the fans without tickets outnumbered the fans with tickets.
“Those who have received tickets have got details about how to get to the stadium and the routes designed for West Ham fans – I’m guessing that Fiorentina have had the same to try and keep the fans separate. You don’t know what might happen but I don’t envisage there being a lot of trouble.”
Besides the optimistic few who purchased plane tickets well in advance of West Ham reaching the final, most fans will face a multi-legged trip to Prague too after direct flights from London surged by over 500 per cent after they booked their place in the final.
“I’m going on Tuesday and going halfway around Europe to get there!” Kyriacou says. “Accommodation is really easy, Prague has got plenty of places and at pretty decent prices but it’s the flights that have been really bad. I’m going to Zurich via Vienna and then getting a coach down to Prague.
“Everyone seems to be going via different routes. Quite a few seem to be going via Bratislava and travelling up, or going to Poland and then across. One of our friends is currently out in Sicily on holiday with his family, he’s travelling from there to the final and then joining his family back again to finish off his holiday.”
Whether fans have tickets or not, everyone in Prague will make sure to savour a rare opportunity of watching their club compete for a European trophy. And if they are that way inclined, can catch a pre-match set from the one and only Chesney Hawkes, who will perform for his fellow Hammers at the fan park a few hours before the game.
Having travelled from Silkeborg to Bucharest to Brussels in the group stage and then from Larnaca to Gent to Alkmaar in the knockouts, West Ham fans have finally reached their end destination. And all those in attendance in Prague will be sure to make the most of it.
Joe Cole was speaking to i on behalf of BT Sport, the exclusive home of the Uefa Europa Conference League final. Watch West Ham United v Fiorentina exclusively live on BT Sport 1 on Wednesday 7th June from 6:30pm. The final is also available for anyone to watch on the BT Sport website, YouTube channel and app
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/Dpa4gl0
Post a Comment