Eintracht Frankfurt is in the Europe League and still unbeaten. The Fans of the Bundesliga can provide for a creepy atmosphere, but more under the observation of the UEFA. A powder keg, says one of them.
Five years ago, the European football world was amazed. Record-breaking 12,000 supporters joined the Bundesliga side Eintracht Frankfurt at the time, to the Europe League away game to Bordeaux. In that season, the Hesse eventually failed in the round of 32 at FC Porto, because of the less scored away goals. This Thursday (kick-off 21 PM, 20.45 PM in the DW live Ticker for this) is again a Europa League away game in Portugal, this time at Benfica Lisbon in the quarter-finals. And the followers of the Frankfurt are confident that at the end of a different overall result. Because the current season is very special. “I think the surprising Cup victory in last year against Bayern makes all the difference. This victory has electrified the whole city,” says Eintracht Fan of Ari the DW. “This mood is then transferred in the stadium to the Bundesliga, and especially the Europa League.”
Blind-Date-Tickets
With the 3:1 victory against FC Bayern in the DFB-Cup final in 2018 in Berlin, a 30-year-old thirst-ended range of the Frankfurt without a title, and five years without performances on the European stage. Ari is harmony in his own words, always been a Fan as long as he can remember. In 1992 he saw his first game in the stadium. And he was also one of 40,000 lucky Fans who got hold of a Blind Date-a Ticket for the Europa League. For 93 Euro, the Frankfurt supporters buy tickets for all three group games could know – but without the opponent. Six weeks before the draw, the Tickets were sold out.
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No one seems to have regretted this investment. The atmosphere in the stadium was breathtaking. And again looked at the football-Europe jealous to Frankfurt. “Anyone with power, and after the victory all remain, to celebrate the players. This was not in the past always like that,” admits Ari. The Frankfurt Fans have earned this season “in Europe and around the world a fantastic reputation”: “If you just look at the choreography, with the exception of the game against Donetsk, where it was canceled. These choreographies are unique. And that we have at every home game, such choreography is unbelievable.”
“Fanaticism pur”
However, not much was missing, and the Eintracht Fans have made their just acquired a good reputation right back to nothing. Before the return game against Donetsk, there were clashes with the police. Frankfurt would be excreted in this game, would be to escalate the situation in the stands, believes Ari: “If this would have gone against the Donetsk wrong, you would have had riots in the stadium. The old Eintracht scene would have been reported back. The aggressive and unpredictable. The Frankfurt is: bigotry, pure and simple.”
The last in the second round at the away game in Milan, Eintracht-Fans of pyrotechnics lit up and flares to the place threw – and, although a penalty in the UEFA against Frankfurt due to previous incidents, was only suspended. “This is the flip side of the Eintracht Fans,” says Ari. “You are just very fanatic and have an almost Mediterranean Temperament. It was very, very weak and very bitter, that is the risk, possibly to destroy tens of thousands of Fans, the dream of the next away trip.”
Pyrotechnics in the Eintracht fan block during the eighth-final second leg game of the Frankfurt Inter Milan
To view the Eintracht Board member Axel Hellmann, the Association “lucky”, because of the incidents in Milan with a fine of 50,000 euros and an extension of the suspended sentence to a year come may: “We will be after the completion of this competition – when, for us he is finished and should be – internally, together with the supporters do not discuss how to do it with a view to future European competitions, to stand again in front of an audience exclusion.”
Euphoria on shaky ground
Eintracht-Fans Ari would have liked by the Ultras that they would have dragged the culprit from the traffic: “it would have been for me the right response.” A possible stadium ban by UEFA for the game in Lisbon, Ari, would have led to a “divided fan base like in the 90s”. “This is a powder keg in Frankfurt. The Eintracht fan scene is very unsteady, between their positive radiance and the shadow world, in which they has been as a ‘riot master’.” The euphoria could be swept away by the incident in Milan, abruptly: “Everything that has been built here – in the area of external representation, a new style of play, and the role of favorite in many Games – would have been gone from today to tomorrow, because three times in pyrotechnics and flares, which were fired to the square. That’s how it is in Frankfurt, from the Good to something Bad.”
For the game at the Estadio de Luz against Benfica Ari is hoping for a positive performance of both the Eintracht players on the field, as well as their Fans in the stands, so the European adventure is still going as long as possible. “I wish, of course, that the Fans celebrate in Lisbon, a great Feast, and Europe and show the world what a great fan base we have here. You should enjoy the game and simply even louder singing. So cold is it in mid-April, the need for pyrotechnics to warm up.”