After flares landing on the pitch UEFA ordered Fenerbahçe to play behind closed doors against BATE Borisov. But they couldn’t close the sky above it, allowing host supporters to pour a rain of flares…

When Fenerbahçe supporters landed flares on the pitch against Borussia M’gladbach, a penalty from UEFA was imminent. But was it effective? Turkish supporters decided to prove the opposite yesterday, as their team was facing Belarusian BATE Borisov behind closed doors.

With only a few hundred people inside, mostly press and officials, thousands gathered around Şükrü Saracoglu, watching the game on a giant screen. Except they weren’t only watching. They also fired dozens of signal flares into the sky, making it fiery red:

With even small parachutes attached to the pyrotechnic materials, they were slowly falling, some inside the stadium, causing yet another game pause, just like when they did it before.

All this was accompanied by a large banner hanged in front of TV cameras (opposite the main stand), saying ‘As if we were here’ in English.

This may be the first time a game has been interrupted with flares despite no fans being inside the ground (or at least first time with a stadium of this size). Once the home club scored the only goal of the two-legged tie, the crowd outside went crazy and had a massive street party, also firing quite a few pyrotechnic materials:

StadiumDB.com comment: We’re guessing that yet another penalty from UEFA doesn’t make fans too sad as they were clearly enjoying themselves Despite us not supporting throwing anything onto the pitch they did prove a point – closing the stadium isn’t much of an answer to the problem, it’s just pushing the problem several meters away. And it may turn out not far enough in the end…