Barcelona fan misses huge Champions League game against Newcastle United as he turned up at wrong St James Park
Quite often it pays to do a bit of research before blindly following instructions, and that's a lesson one Barcelona fan learned the hard way last night.
Newcastle United hosted Barcelona at St James' Park in the Champions League on Tuesday night. Meanwhile, 366 miles away, Exeter City were hosting Lincoln City at ... St James Park.
One unfortunate Barcelona fan followed the directions to St James Park and must have wondered how Newcastle had even got into the Champions League with the 8700 capacity stadium that he found himself at.
It wasn't until a helpful steward pointed out his mistake that he realised what had happened. But being over six hours away from Newcastle, he was never going to make it in time to watch Barca, so he took advantage of the Devonshire hospitality and stayed to watch Exeter lose to Lincoln.
Exeter staffer had a cheeky dig at Newcastle
The cheeky Supporter Experience Officer at Exeter had a little dig at Newcastle's ground when he explained what had happened via Exeter's X account.
“One of our volunteers came to the office to let us know that this guy had turned up expecting to see FC Barcelona. His English wasn’t great, but from what we could gather, he’d come from London. My guess is he’d put St James Park in his phone and then just followed the directions from there.
“He was pretty gutted and a bit embarrassed. So, we sorted him out a ticket and he got to watch a game at the real St James Park. He’d be welcome back any time.”
Will he be able to find his way to the Camp Nou on Wednesday?
Well, at least the fella will have a funny story to tell his mates when he gets back home. And he missed seeing his beloved Barcelona played off the park for 93 minutes only to snatch an undeserved draw at the death.
We wonder if he will be in attendance at the Nou Camp next week.
Honesty, I wish I could have seen the confused look on his face when he rocked up to Exeter's ground expecting to see Champions League football.
