Feeble number of Barcelona fans coming to Newcastle United match – Why so low? | OneFootball

Barcelona fans are on their way to Newcastle Upon Tyne this week.

However, don’t expect Newcastle City Centre to be swamped.

Indeed, quite the opposite.

You may well find yourself lucky to spot any Barcelona fans ahead of the match and even inside St James’ Park your eyes won’t deceive you.

Yes, that is how few Barcelona fans that are in the away section.

The Catalan club has taken an allocation of only 800 tickets for the Champions League match and judging by past Newcastle United matches against them, that probably is overly optimistic. In 1997 and 2003, no more than 500 Barcelona fans were at each of the two Champions League games on Tyneside.

Before we get the feral Newcastle United (and Newcastle Upon Tyne) haters piling in, this isn’t an NUFC specific thing.

Almost exactly a year ago, Barcelona fans travelled to Monaco for their first Champions League away match of the 2024/25 season, it is a flight time of only an hour and 20 minutes from Barcelona to Nice (12 miles from Monaco).

‘Around 500 supporters travelled to Monaco to support Barcelona at the game…’

You also had for example the knockout last 16 away tie at Benfica, Portugal of course borders Spain, less than a two hour flight Barcelona to Lisbon.

Barcelona official site before away Champions League last 16 away first leg at Benfica – 4 March 2025:

‘This Wednesday, FC Barcelona have a huge UEFA Champions League last 16 game away to Benfica, and as usual, the players will be joined on their travels by swathes of blaugrana clad supporters.

1,000 of those will be from different Barça penyas from around the world, and most especially those from the Penya Barcelonista de Lisboa, who are acting as hosts for the second time this season after Barça were also in the Portuguese capital to play the same side, and win a thrilling contest 5-4, during the League Phase. But there are also fans arriving from further afield, even from Bogotá, Colombia and Shanghai, China.

In addition, a further 613 FC Barcelona club members will be inside the Stadium of Light to support the team in the 9pm CET kick-off.

Extremadura tops the list The largest contingent of travelling support will be coming from Extremadura, understandably enough as the region in the west of Spain is within easy reach of Lisbon. No fewer than 560 people from the club’s 39 official supporters clubs in that region will be heading across the border to watch their team in action.

Around 100 will be travelling from Catalonia, a similar number are from Andalusia and there will be 50 from Castilla y León, the latter also being regions that are geographically close to Portugal.’

As you can see, only 613 FC Barcelona club members went to that away leg of the last 16 in the Champions League in March this year.

When it comes to Barcelona fans at Champions League away matches, to get close to any kind of noticeable numbers of supporters, they massively rely on gloryhunting fans from other countries and/or official supporter clubs in other Spanish cities.

For that Benfica last 16 away game six months ago, they only had around 1,600 Barcelona fans there and 1,000 of those were from these official supporters clubs elsewhere.

Going to away matches in La Liga isn’t so much part of the culture as it is in the likes of England and indeed many other European countries. The distances involved in getting to away matches in Spain is a factor often put forward but that doesn’t tell the whole story, especially with Barcelona fans.

They are supposedly one of the biggest clubs, if not the biggest, in the world, yet so few Barcelona fans going to away games, domestically and in all but the very biggest Champions League ones.