Liverpool fans are making plans to give Manchester City an explosive welcome to Anfield when the two sides meet in the Champions League quarter-final next month- but their scheme is illegal.
The Reds clash with Pep Guardiola’s Premier League table toppers is one of the most highly anticipated ties – with the first leg on Merseyside on April 4, as originally reported in the Liverpool Echo.
And supporters are aiming to make it a night to remember by lining the streets of Liverpool and create a red hot reception to the City team bus.
A poster has been circulated around social media attempting to organise fans for a “coach greeting” which would stretch a quarter of a mile from the ground.
“We’re going to show them exactly what money can’t buy,” declares the poster.
It also says ‘Bring your flares and flags. Banners and bangers. Pints and Pyro. There will be thousands of scouse voices ready to scare em back to Mancland with their tails between their legs before the match even starts.’
Giving visiting teams a hostile reception for big games has become something of a hostile tradition – Youtube footage shows the Villarreal bus being greeted by flares, smoke bombs and missiles before their Europa League semi-final nearly two years ago.
That video shows Liverpool fans booing and chanting as the Villarreal coach pulls up to the Anfield stadium, with some fans scaling nearby scaffolding and others hurling cans and other missiles at the bus as it slowly drives up, with a police escort.
But the call for fans to bring pyrotechnics to the ground appears to be in contravention of the Sporting Events Act.
That makes it an offence to ‘attempt to enter’ grounds with smoke bombs and flares – and the Football Supporters Federation has warned in the past that being in possession of a pyrotechnic device in the vicinity of the ground, and having a match ticket, has brought arrests.
It is also illegal to let off a firework, flare or smoke bomb in a public place, although Merseyside Police appear to have turned a blind eye in the past.
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