The question is almost obligatory and can be heard again and again this Tuesday: "Do you still have a ticket for tonight?" And the answer is usually always the same: "I'm still looking for it myself." Thousands of Frankfurters have had them in the past few days traveled to Portugal to be able to follow Eintracht Frankfurt's final group game in the Champions League live in the capital, Lisbon, and to cheer on their team.

Daniel Schleidt

Coordinator of the economics department in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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But: Most of them will only see the Estádio José Alvalade, in which Sporting plays its home games north of the city center, from the outside.

Because the top Portuguese club decided to leave thousands of empty seats in the 50,000-seat arena rather than open it to Eintracht fans.

Apparently the club does not get the tickets sold to its own supporters, the Frankfurters would like to take them.

Frankfurt fans have to stay outside

But the tickets are reserved for members and cannot be bought by German fans.

For thousands of Frankfurters who made the trip to Portugal for a lot of money, this is a farce.

Already on Monday, many of them had tried to get tickets in front of the Sporting ticket shop at the stadium and even asked fans of the opposing team to use their membership cards to get tickets for Hessian fans.

But most inquiries were unsuccessful.

Christoph, for example, drove from Frankfurt to Luxembourg with some friends on Monday and flew to Lisbon from there to see Eintracht in the Champions League.

His hope: he would somehow get a ticket on site.

"But that won't work anymore," he says on Tuesday in Lisbon's Mercado da Ribeira market hall and sips his wheat beer.

In total, Eintracht was allocated 2,500 tickets, which quickly sold out among the fans.

Sporting don't want to be like Barcelona

Ever since last year's successful Europa League season, which ended with the title, Frankfurt football fans have had the reputation of always attending away games with numerous fans who love to travel.

The trip to Barcelona in particular, when Eintracht Frankfurt won 3-2 against Barcelona in front of more than 30,000 Frankfurters at the Camp Nou stadium and made the away game a home game, made the headlines.

At that time, FC Barcelona had almost forgone the home field advantage and preferred to collect the money for the tickets from the Frankfurt fans.

Christopher is disappointed.

He cannot understand why a club would rather leave seats empty than give them to football fans who have a genuine interest in them.

He doesn't want to let his spirits spoil on this day, when people from Frankfurt are out and about everywhere in the metropolis on the Atlantic coast.

They will watch the game in a pub - probably with many other fans from Hessen.