There will officially be 2,816 West Ham supporters on Thursday (9 p.m.) at Parc OL, in the parking lot reserved for them, on the occasion of the Europa League quarter-final second leg. But as the popular fervor shown last week at the London Stadium foreshadowed (60,000 seats sold in four days, record timing for the English club), there are many more of them wanting to attend this European clash in Décines, where attendance should be around 55,000 spectators, like last month against Porto.
As of April 7, the day of the first leg (1-1) in London, the Rhône prefecture published an order prohibiting access to the OL Park and its surroundings, Thursday April 14 from 8 a.m. to midnight, “at anyone claiming to be a West Ham supporter and not in possession of a ticket purchased from the West Ham club”.
Tickets will be put back on sale by OL
In this prefectural decree is mentioned the risk of seeing “1,000 to 3,000 English people traveling to Lyon to support their team and attend the match without a ticket, or in possession of tickets other than those sold by the West Ham club”. OL confirms to 20 minutes to have taken the problem head on since more than a thousand Hammers supporters have just had the tickets they had purchased for the match canceled in recent days. “These will be put back on sale”, announces the Lyon club, which has therefore found a way to identify that many tickets had not been purchased by fans of Anthony Lopes and his partners.
An episode which is reminiscent of the email received from OL, in November 2018, by Saint-Etienne supporters who had planned to attend the derby in Décines despite a similar prefectural decree: “Since your email address contains elements suggesting that you support AS Saint-Etienne, we inform you that all the tickets purchased by this customer account have been canceled and that you will be reimbursed as soon as possible”. So, have [email protected] emails betrayed West Ham fans?