Milan ultras have announced they will not be travelling for the Champions League game against Liverpool at Anfield, blaming UEFA for ‘confused’ messages.
The Rossoneri have their first fixture in the tournament at the legendary Anfield on Wednesday September 15.
UEFA announced that travelling fans will be able to enter the stadium for away games this season, but must stick to the COVID regulations of the host countries.
“It is with a heavy heart that we are forced to forego the trip to Liverpool next week,” wrote the Curva Sud Milano group in an Instagram post.
“The information is still confused and uncertain, there aren’t many flights and the rigid English rules around COVID give us no other choice.
“UEFA have once again showed that ‘football is for the fans’ remains an empty slogan. The truth is that once more the fans are pushed aside, the authorisation from the European football chiefs to attend away games was given less than a week before the first fixtures and even then dependent on the decisions of individual governments.”
2 months ago just 1000 Italian fans were allowed tickets for the showcase event v hosts England with 68000 fans.
A real shame then, and a real shame now that 2 months later it has become no easier to travel to the UK to watch a football match.
What’s even more ironic is that a country (UK) having avg 40k Covid cases per day has unworkable restrictions to visitors from a country with under 5k daily cases.
I’ve been with the Milan tifosi for almost every CL away match on UK soil for the last 20 years. Memorable nights at Old Trafford, etc A real shame that the Brigate won’t be there at an institution rich in heritage such as Anfield.
The UK is still wallowing in its post Brexit ‘we want our country back’ BS. The rules are ridiculously stringent and designed to demonstrate that the UK govt is ‘tough’ on borders and tough on control and is also a useful diversion to the fact that the UK has the highest COVID related death rate in Europe. By all means test people before entry but the rest is just gestures and politics. Not to mention a rip off – the UK Govt have overseen a privately operated but very unreliable and semi useless testing system that makes millions of pounds in profit from its own citizens who need to travel.