The two stadiums are 366 miles apart. One holds more than 50,000 people, the other less than 10,000. The buzz as you walk up to the two grounds is a little different.<\/p>\n
But nevertheless, one Barcelona fan appeared not to have realised that he was at the wrong ground and tried to get through the turnstiles at Exeter City\u2019s modest stadium (St James Park), rather than Newcastle United\u2019s hulking one (St James\u2019 Park).<\/p>\n
Staff at Exeter told on Thursday how they gently explained the mistake and gave him a seat for their third-tier match against Lincoln City rather than the Champions League clash he had hoped to watch.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe looked absolutely devastated,\u201d said Adam Spencer, supporter experience officer at Exeter City<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI put him in a nice seat in the main stand. I thought, well, he\u2019s closer to the pitch here than he would be in Newcastle, and we\u2019ve got no VAR [top flight football\u2019s video assistant referee system] so I thought he may have had a better night actually.\u201d<\/p>\n But when Spencer went to check on him in the second half, the supporter had slipped away. News of the mistake has spread far and wide.<\/a> A well-known opticians is trying to track the fan down to do some publicity about the error, as is a betting company.<\/p>\n \u201cHe must have seen it by now,\u201d said Spencer, \u201cBut from my interaction with him on Tuesday, I would say he\u2019s probably too embarrassed at the moment. I\u2019m sure in years to come he\u2019ll look back on his great night at Exeter City. But maybe not this week.\u201d<\/p>\n Spencer said he was getting ready for the match when a member of the club\u2019s ambassador team popped his head into the office.<\/p>\n \u201cThey said there\u2019s a guy trying to get in a turnstile with a Newcastle v Barcelona<\/a> ticket. I thought it was a wind-up. I got them to bring him round to the fan zone. He was probably in his late-20s, early-30s. Dishevelled look on his face. I could tell he had been through the wringer.<\/p>\n \u201cHe didn\u2019t speak much English. He just told me: \u2018Train, London.\u2019 We think he had travelled down from London and just got off the train and walked straight up to the turnstile with his ticket and tried to use it. He told some of the supporters that his ticket cost \u00a3100.<\/p>\n Exeter supporters trust membership being sold at the match on Tuesday. Photograph: Phil Mingo\/PPAUK\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n \u201cI told him: \u2018Look buddy, I\u2019m going to get you a ticket to come in here tonight. You\u2019ve still got to watch some football.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cI walked him up to the gate. I said, to be honest, mate, I\u2019d rather watch Reece Cole <\/a>[an Exeter midfielder] than Lamine Yamal [Barcelona superstar] anyway. But I don\u2019t think he understood a word I said.\u201d<\/p>\n By the second half he had gone. \u201cWhether he was sat in another seat or had popped into the city to watch the Barcelona game on TV or drown his sorrows. I don\u2019t know,\u201d said Spencer.<\/p>\n \u201cMy guess would be he\u2019s put St James Park in his phone. The railway station right next to the station here has the same name. And off he trots. That\u2019s his planning done. He\u2019s on a nice, relaxing journey. Until he gets here and walks up to the stadium and thinks, I thought the Gallowgate [Newcastle\u2019s famous end] would be a bit louder than that.\u201d<\/p>\n There has been scepticism about the story<\/a> from some football fans and commentators.<\/p>\n Spencer said: \u201cI guess it\u2019s pretty unbelievable that you could make that mistake, but I think the biggest factor was that he didn\u2019t speak much English. Spencer said he didn\u2019t take a picture because the Barcelona fan was so abashed. \u201cI didn\u2019t feel right at the time to ask him.\u201d<\/p>\n Exeter has never played Barcelona but one link is that they are both fan-owned.<\/p>\n Exeter\u2019s ground has a capacity well short of 10,000, while St James\u2019 Park in Newcastle holds more than 50,000 fans. Photograph: James Marsh\/Rex\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n Neil Le Milliere, a member of the supporters\u2019 trust board that owns the majority shareholding in the club, said: \u201cIt\u2019s typical of our club to sort out someone like that.\u201d<\/p>\n Le Milliere said he was pretty sure the fan visited the supporters-run bar, The Famous Exeter City Real Ale and Cider Emporium, on Tuesday. \u201cLots of away supporters ask us why their clubs don\u2019t have something like that.\u201d<\/p>\n Some have wondered if an apostrophe led to the mistake. St James\u2019 Park in Newcastle has one; Exeter\u2019s is St James Park.<\/p>\n Veteran Exeter fan Clive Edmonds-Brown said: \u201cThe poor chap\u2019s heart must have sunk. It\u2019s a shame he didn\u2019t bring the Barcelona team with him.\u201d<\/p>\n Another supporter, Karen Blundell, said: \u201cI am surprised he didn\u2019t see all the home fans in red and white rather than the black and white of Newcastle United. Bit of a schoolboy error.\u201d<\/p>\n But Spencer can sympathise. By coincidence, he visited Barcelona last weekend, booked for a tour of the club\u2019s Nou Camp \u2013 and got lost on the way there. \u201cI got on the wrong tube. I messed up but obviously not as much as him. I didn\u2019t end up in northern Spain<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The two stadiums are 366 miles apart. One holds more than 50,000 people, the other less than 10,000.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472295,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-472294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}