Filling The Void With Plastic Fans

Not everyone can be Sporting Lisbon and feature a design-conscious stadium which looks full even when it’s not, and not every club can be [insert Big Club FC here] and fill the banks with a sellout each and every weekend.

Triestina is one such club, and they’re found great difficulties, or impossibilities, in filling over 32k in Serie B (attendance issues in Serie A are well-documented – no prizes for correctly predicting issues in Serie B). So they’ve done the smart thing: closed a section of the stadium and put in fake fans.

Appearance, as we know, is everything.

…rather than leave the empty seats on full show, the club have attempted to hide them by covering the lower part of the stand with several large banners printed with crowd scenes.

The effect was put to the test in front of the 3,810 supporters that saw Sunday’s 1-0 win over Pescara. When Ettore Marchi scored what proved to be the winning goal after nine minutes, the two-dimensional crowd looked jubilant but stayed silent.

Far from the real thing, but in a sense refreshingly honest and, yes, real: Triestina’s at least being honest about its “plastic fans”, unlike most big clubs.

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Category: Europe