For a long time it wasn’t foreseeable whether FC Bayern, who were recently badly hit, would even be in the quarter-finals of the Champions League, but after a clear win in the second leg over Lazio Rome, people around Munich can look forward to further games in the premier class. However, this does not apply to everyone, because the most loyal fans have to swallow a bitter pill due to individual mistakes.
The draw for the quarter-finals of the Champions League will take place next Friday at the House of European Football in Nyon (sport.de reports on March 15th from 12:00 p.m. in the live blog), including: FC Bayern.
But no matter where the people of Munich end up having to travel, whether to Manchester, Paris, Madrid or somewhere else entirely, they won’t have the support of their own supporters there.
After pyrotechnic incidents in the preliminary round and a disregard of probation requirements in the first leg of the round of 16 in Rome, where massive pyrotechnics were set off (see article image), UEFA imposed a drastic penalty on the German record champions and banned FC Bayern supporters from the away game Quarterfinals excluded.
“We have to accept the punishment. Not only were pyrotechnics set off in the stands, but also targeted shots were fired onto the pitch, which put people who were not involved in immediate danger. This meant that the probation conditions were so explicitly violated that an objection is unfortunately pointless,” explained Bayerns Chairman of the board Jan-Christian Dreesen on the club’s own homepage.
Dreesen added that he was still “very happy” to be in the quarter-finals, but: “The fact that we now have to do without the support of our own fans away from home hits us very hard.”
Can FC Bayern deliver its “top performance” even without fans?
Only “a small group of individual perpetrators” had “done all our supporters and the team a disservice,” said the Munich club boss angrily.
But he hopes and is also confident “that our team will find a way to still deliver the top performance that will be necessary in the quarter-finals,” emphasized Dreesen.
In addition to the fan ban, the Bundesliga club was also fined a total of 50,750 euros. In October, UEFA had already fined Bayern 40,000 euros for the misconduct of their supporters. This was also linked to the already mentioned probation of two years, which was most recently violated in Rome.