Barcelona fans had something to cheer about in dramatic fashion at Newcastle on Tuesday night, but one of their travelling supporters somehow mistakenly found himself 366 miles away in Exeter.
Newcastle United and Exeter City are separated by over six hours in car – let alone the fact that the former is a Champions League side in the Premier League, while the other is mid-table in League One.
However, they do share the same stadium name and this proved a stumbling block for one Barca supporter as confirmed by Exeter City’s account on X.
Both teams play at St James Park – although there is a subtle difference in the spelling with an apostrophe after the ‘s’ for Newcastle’s ground and no apostrophe for Exeter’s. St James’ Park is a 52,264-seater capacity stadium, while St James Park is 8,720.
And that perhaps caught out the Barcelona fan in question as he headed south west from London, rather than north east.
Upon arriving to St James Park, the Spaniard was only informed of his mistake by Exeter staff when he tried to get into their Adam Stansfield stand.
One Barcelona fan missed out on their 1-1 draw at Newcastle as he travelled to Exeter by error
The Spaniard travelled to Exeter’s St James Park, instead of Newcastle’s St James’ Park
Newcastle’s ground has a 52,264-seater capacity – holding almost 43,000 more than Exeter’s
It didn’t prove a wasted journey for him though as Exeter saw he watched their match instead – albeit a 1-0 home defeat by league leaders Lincoln City.
Adam Spencer, Supporter Experience Officer at Exeter City, said: ‘One of our volunteers came to the office to let us know that this guy had turned up expecting to see FC Barcelona.
‘His English wasn’t great, but from what we could gather, he’d come from London. My guess is he’d put St James Park in his phone and then just followed the directions from there.
“He was pretty gutted and a bit embarrassed. So, we sorted him out a ticket and he got to watch a game at the real St James Park. He’d be welcome back any time.”
As for the fan’s beloved Barca? They earned a 1-1 draw in their Champions League last-16 first-leg tie, thanks to Lamine Yamal’s penalty deep into second-half stoppage-time.
Hopefully he’ll have no problem attending the return leg on March 18 at 5.45pm (GMT).
