Ticket prices could be capped for travelling fans in European club games

A cap on ticket prices for away fans in European club competitions appears close to being agreed after pressure from fans on leading clubs and Uefa.

Liverpool supporters paid £73 for their Champions League semifinal trip to Roma last season, while Manchester United fans had to pay £89 for £54 seats at Sevilla.

Supporters of the Merseyside club and Bayern Munich – whose fans boycotted their game against Anderlecht in November 2017 – approached the European Club Association, which agreed to set up a working group with Uefa. Speaking to reporters at the ECA general assembly in Amsterdam yesterday, the organisation’s general secretary Michele Centenaro said the matter would now to be discussed by the clubs on Monday and “a proposal” would go to the next Uefa club competitions committee on May 14.

Both Liverpool and Porto have agreed to keep prices down for each others’ fans in their Champions League quarter-final next month, with Porto agreeing to reduce the cost of an away ticket from a planned £73 to £52. But there has been no such co-operation between Barcelona and Manchester United, with the Premier League club deciding to subsidise the £102 cost of an away ticket at the Nou Camp by charging Barca fans the same price at Old Trafford.

ECA vice-chairman Edwin van der Sar, the former Manchester United goalkeeper who is now chief executive of Ajax, said: “It’s important that we keep football affordable for local fans so they can travel at home and abroad.”