Bad blood spilled when the two teams met in the Europa League quarter-finals in April
© David S Bustamante/Socrates/Getty Images © Getty Images
Catalan police have arrested five members of an FC Barcelona ultras group in relation to incidents that occurred ahead of their team’s Europa League quarter-final second leg tie with Eintracht Frankfurt.
To guarantee a trophyless season, the Blaugrana were beaten 3-2 on the night at Camp Nou and 4-3 on aggregate as eventual competition winners Frankfurt progressed to the last four against West Ham.
The evening at Barca’s iconic ground was perhaps most remembered for a German “invasion” which left 30,000 loud Frankfurt fans giving off the feeling they had outnumbered Barca’s supporters in their own ground.
“I thought we were playing at home,” Frankfurt coach Oliver Glasner later said, with the embarrassing development causing Barca to launch an internal investigation into how a ticketing fiasco had been allowed to occur.
30,000 Frankfurt fans in the Camp Nou tonight 👏 pic.twitter.com/QVTPeGks7p
— Football Away Days (@AwayDays_) April 14, 2022
Three months later, the Mossos d’Esquadra have confirmed that five members of a Barca ultras group were detained with four of them issued an order that bans them from being within a thousand meters of Camp Nou and another hit with a restraining order.
On the afternoon of Thursday April 14, several Frankfurt fans were attacked with blunt tools and illegal weapons which caused one victim to suffer serious injuries.
Other incidents occurred around Camp Nou and there were also clashes with local law enforcement agents including direct attacks on the police.
This caused the Mossos to launch an investigation to identify and arrest the perpetrators, and one of the victims has also been located in Germany.
The arrests took place between June 16 and July 4 with the detainees aged from 18 to 46.
But as the investigation is still open, the Mossos have not ruled out making more arrests in the near future.
