DREADING THE PROSPECT OF A CUP FINAL TICKET FIASCO IN HAMBURGSource - The KOP magazine.
There's a massive irony in SEAT sponsoring all of the Europa League games because the giant advertising boards their logo is emblazoned across are denying a lot of people a seat.
Anfield's capacity is restricted on European nights so UEFA can charge bigger bucks for bigger ads, and should the Reds get to Hamburg, European football's governing body will once again ensure that those who deserve tickets the most don't get them.
Hamburg's HSH Nordbank Arena, which will be known as the 'Hamburg Arena' for the final because UEFA's corporate sponsorship rules (i.e. if they're not getting anything out of it, it's not allowed) has a capacity of 57,274.
For the Europa League final, however, the capacity is cut to 51,500 as seats are put on the standing area at the north end of the ground.
Both finalists will get approximately 12,875 of those tickets, 25% of the capacity.
The German FA were given tickets to sell in December and January, a further 5,100 tickets have already been balloted off to the international football community and the rest, as ever, will go to UEFA's 'football family', or Michel Platini's trough-fillers as they're otherwise known.
Given the fiasco that ensued when the Reds were given 16,779 tickets for the Champions League final in Athens in 2007, you don't need to be a genius to work out that similar problems are going to follow if Atletico Madrid are defeated.
Rick Parry never did play the numbers game, but it was estimated that 7,000 of the Athens tickets went to Priority Rights Holders (ex shareholders), corporate Season Ticket Holders, sponsors and the players.
Should a similar ticketing plan be implemented for Hamburg, and you have to imagine it would be, we could be looking at less than 6,000 tickets going into a ballot for everyone else, which would only be enough for a quarter of all Season Ticket Holders, let alone anyone who coughed up whatever it cost to be in the All Red membership scheme.
Demand might not be as high as it would be for a Champions League final, but over 30,000 Reds went to Dortmund in 2001 for the UEFA Cup final and Hamburg isn't the hardest place in Europe to get to.
Getting into the ground will be even harder if Hamburg knock Fulham out to reach their first European final since 1982.
They too would only get 25% of the tickets for a final in their home stadium, the equivalent of us only being allocated the Kop for a match at Anfield.
That would make black market tickets far harder to get hold of and, thanks to UEFA's measly allocation, allow the touts to charge even more than normal.
I'm crossing a bridge before we've even got to it here because no-one should be dismissing Atletico Madrid, but the prospect of Liverpool getting to a European Final only for a repeat of the Athens ticket scandal to dominate the build up fills me with dread.
"The final in Dortmund in 2001 may be a mild affair compared with the atmosphere we could generate in Hamburg," said Bernd Hoffmann, Hamburg's chairman.
It won't be if there's less than 13,000 Kopites there and that looks likely to be the case if Liverpool get to Hamburg thanks to UEFA, an organisation that cares far more about SEATs than seats.
If I know Scousers....they'll get tickets somehow
