First game of the new Camp Nou! Athletic Bilbao official: Barcelona cannot provide away team tickets to the team

November 18th: Barcelona will return to Camp Nou this Saturday against Bilbao. This will be Barcelona’s first return to Camp Nou after nearly two and a half years. Athletic Bilbao officials stated that FC Barcelona will not be able to provide away team tickets to Athletic Bilbao.

[Official Announcement from Bilbao]

Athletic Club Bilbao informed of the reasons received from FC Barcelona that prevent it from providing the usual ticket quota allocated to fans of the Red and White Legion.

Next Saturday, FC Barcelona and Athletic Club Bilbao will face off at the new Spotify Nou Camp Stadium. This game will not provide exclusive tickets for Red and White fans as usual.

Barcelona submitted the following reasons a few minutes ago:

With a Level 1B license, it cannot guarantee the isolation measures, control mechanisms and minimum protection conditions required by regulations to receive visiting fans. As a result, the secure entrance to the subdivision cannot be opened until some of the improvements that are already underway and will be ready in the coming weeks are completed.

The specific reasons are as follows:

Non-independent entrances and exits: Existing entrances and exits cannot set up exclusive passages for away team fans, making it impossible to avoid cross flow with home team fans.

Insufficient physical zoning: The stands lack sufficient structural facilities to safely isolate and delineate visiting team fan areas.