• Olympique de Marseille welcomes Eintracht Frankfurt this Tuesday (9 p.m.) at the Vélodrome stadium for the second day of the group stages of the Champions League.

  • OM, like the local authorities, have taken measures to avoid any risk of confrontation between Marseille and German supporters.

  • German supporters have the particularity of moving in large numbers during European matches, and everyone has in mind the scenes of violence between supporters of Nice and Cologne last Thursday in the Europa League Conference.

Can Frankfurt fans invade Marseille as they did in Barcelona or Sevilla last season?

This is the question that agitates Olympique de Marseille, and more generally the city, when receiving Eintracht Frankfurt this Tuesday evening (9 p.m.) for the second day of the group stages of the Champions League.

The clashes between Cologne and Nice supporters last Thursday at the Allianz Riviera in the Europa League Conference are on everyone's mind, like the invasion of Camp Nou by nearly 30,000 Frankfurt supporters in the quarter-final second leg of the Europa League at the spring, then in the final, where several fights had broken out with Rangers supporters.

Hence calls from Marseille supporters to "do everything not to relive the same scenes as at Camp Nou" since the sale of tickets for this match.



“It impressed everyone what they managed to do at Barcelona.

I saw tweets from guys in Frankfurt explaining how to buy tickets on the OM website, so there is a little fear, yes.

If there is a club capable of doing this, it is Frankfurt.

But I have the impression that the Marseillais who are selling their places are playing the game. And there are so many Marseille supporters who want to attend the match…”, confides Bilo, who has created a Twitter page to connect buyers and sellers space for the Vélodrome stadium.

“Very few” German supporters outside the parking lot

A fear also shared by Olympique de Marseille.

But the club "knows to whom [it] sells places" and estimates that "very few" the number of German supporters who would have managed to buy places outside the visitor parking lot.

Between the success of the Champions League packs and the strong popular expectation around the return of OM to the competition behind closed doors during the pandemic, the Olympian staff does not imagine for a single second a "Barcelonian" scenario, so that 62,500 tickets have already found takers.

According to our information, people holding German bank cards have even seen their purchase finally canceled at the last moment.

And for the smart guys who try to get a ticket from individuals by pretending to be Marseille supporters, there is a very simple technique, perfectly applied by certain Rennes fans, approached in large numbers by Fernabahce fans before the match. of the Europa League on Thursday: a little trick question on the team's mascot or something else, and presto, the rude passage by google trad unmasked.


How to unmask a Fenerbahce supporter who is looking for places.

Joined September 2022 / doesn't understand everything and finds his answers on google pic.twitter.com/SzxNak2Acg

— GAZON.B 🌟 (@GazonBreton) September 12, 2022

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As for the 3,300 supporters who will make the official trip with Eintracht Frankfurt, they will be contained in a fan zone, like the one set up on the beaches of the Prado for the reception of Rotterdam, a precaution which had not avoided clashes of occur.

The place is kept secret to avoid confrontations.

"A buffer zone will be set up between the visitor parking lot and the supporters in Jean Bouin to avoid too close proximity", also specifies OM.

The club has planned 1,200 people, including hostesses, to ensure that everything goes well inside the Velodrome.

The captain of Olympique de Marseille during the victory against Lille (2-1) on Saturday, Mattéo Guendouzi imagines "an extraordinary atmosphere", while hoping "to avoid overflows as we have seen between Nice and Cologne":

“It's a party for everyone, I hope there will be a great atmosphere in the stands.

Even if the most important thing is the pitch, we all know that there are families, children, people who come from far away to see this kind of match, so I hope everything will go very well”.

Orders faced with the risk of overflows in the city

But OM and the local authorities fear the specialty of German supporters: making the trip, even for those who do not have a place for the match.

“They made the trip to 10,000 to Limassol, Greece, while half as many went to the stadium.

They have a fairly incredible ability to move around, ”recalls Bilo.

It is only in Helsinki where the Germans were disappointed, hampered by the lack of air links between the two cities: of the 18,000 places claimed to attend the European Super Cup against Real, 10,000 had finally been returned to the organization.

However, previous Olympians in terms of flow management do not encourage optimism: the receptions of PAOK Salonika and Feyenoord Rotterdam last season led to clashes between supporters of the two camps, in front of forces of helpless order.

Have the public authorities sufficiently taken the measure of the surge to come?

In addition to the 1,200 security personnel, around 600 police forces will be mobilized, which is about as many as in Nice for the tumultuous reception of Cologne.

According to a last count provided by the Frankfurt club, the Bouches-du-Rhône police headquarters, only estimates at just over 2,000 the number of supporters without tickets, likely to come to Marseille.

A figure undoubtedly underestimated, if we rely on the contingents seen during the last European trips of Eintracht.

2,000 supporters without tickets, only?

Faced with the possible presence of German supporters from Monday evening in the city center, the police headquarters took a series of orders: A first prohibiting "the take-out sale of alcoholic beverages in the 1st, 2nd, 6th and 7th arrondissements of the municipality of Marseille" and a second aimed at preventing "access and parking at the Orange Vélodrome stadium and its surroundings to anyone claiming to be a supporter of Eintracht Frankfurt, with the exception of those transported by coaches and buses escorted by the internal security forces" and "to park and drive on the public road in downtown Marseille to anyone claiming the status of supporter of Eintracht Frankfurt on Monday 12 and Tuesday 13 ".

A few days after the Nice fiasco and a little more than three months after the deplorable management of the Champions League final, France would be well advised, finally, to manage an influx of foreign supporters without unfortunate incidents.


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  • Sport

  • Soccer

  • Champions League

  • Olympic Marseille (OM)

  • Frankfurt

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