Arsenal and Paris Saint-Germain will do battle in the Champions League final on Saturday evening
Arsenal and Paris Saint-Germain will meet in the Champions League final on Saturday, with their last meeting shrouded in a ticket allocation controversy. Mikel Arteta and Luis Enrique's teams faced each other in the semi-finals of last year's competition.
The French giants won the first leg in north London 1-0. A week later they saw off the Gunners 2-1 to reach the final, where they won the trophy for the first time by thrashing Inter Milan 5-0.
However, mere days before the first-leg semi-final, a speckle of bad blood between the two emerged. Arsenal confirmed that the French champions would be allocated only 2,500 away tickets and not the customary 3,000.
This caught PSG off guard as the Parisians were granted the regular allocation for their league phase fixture at the Emirates earlier in October.
UEFA regulations require clubs to allocate five per cent of a stadium’s capacity to away fans, but 2,500 tickets is closer to four per cent. Arsenal claimed their decision was driven by security concerns and came at the request of local authorities.
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According to sources, the London Marathon, which took place 48 hours before the match, was one of the areas of concern regarding PSG's ticket allocation.
Regardless of the reason, the French club couldn't hide their anger. They insisted that the decision was not in the spirit of ‘fair play’ and lodged a complaint with UEFA after a request for 500 extra tickets was rejected by the Gunners, as per L’Equipe.
A PSG statement read: "PSG does not find this decision very fair play and has referred the matter to UEFA to try to obtain the quota of 3,000 tickets that are due to it according to UEFA regulations.
"The club could also explore other avenues of appeal between now and Tuesday if necessary. Parisian subscribers received an email on Thursday to buy their ticket for the Emirates."
The bureaucratic feud continued as Arsenal then received just 2,000 tickets for the away fixture. While that was 500 below UEFA's five per cent threshold, PSG were granted special dispensation to reduce it to 4.1 per cent before the start of the season at the request of local police.
The Arsenal Supporters’ Trust hit out at PSG's strict ticketing policy for the game. “It’s not fair that every club that plays a Champions League game in Paris has less tickets for their supporters,” AST board member Tim Payton told the Guardian.
“We don’t expect it will make much difference for next week’s second leg but the new format means that English clubs are going to be playing PSG more regularly over the next few years so something needs to change.”
Saturday's final, Arsenal's first in the Champions League since 2006, will take place at the Puskas Arena in Budapest, Hungary. The arena has a capacity of 67,215, but according to the official Arsenal website, just 17,200 of those in attendance will be Gunners fans.
PSG are thought to have the same number allocated to them, while around 4,600 tickets are sold to the general public worldwide via a lottery system on UEFA's official portal. UEFA states that 39,000 of the 61,400 tickets are available for fans and the general public to purchase directly.
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