kinkladze96 said:
11500 for both teams. that is how many go for the ballot as well. that leaves 8500 for uefa. that is the disgrace.
Why exactly? It's their cup final and there are lots of ordinary, hard-working grass roots football administrators from across Europe who will be rewarded for their efforts in keeping the game ticking over with a free ticket to the UEFA Cup final. Same goes for the sponsors. Unfortunately, it is their money that keeps the game running nowadays, so they are quite rightly going to demand tickets in return for their financial backing.
The only surprising thing about all of this is that people still get surprised by it. It's been going for years at every type of cup final. City's most loyal 11,500 fans will be rewarded, so I don't really see a problem with it as I guess that covers most of our fans who regularly make the effort to travel to away games.
The rest (inlcuding myself) will just have to enter the UEFA ballot and hope for the best.
And, regarding the size of the stadium: this would only be an issue if one of the finalists was English or Scottish (and probably German). The rest of Europe simply don't travel in big numbers, so UEFA would be faced with the embarrassment of playing their final in a half-empty stadium if they opted for one of the big ones.