In this 1996/97 season, the relatively inexperienced Ricardo-Bats duo guided defending champions Paris SG once again to the Coupe des Coupe finals.
After a flawless run, with FC Vaduz, AEK Athens, Galatasaray and Liverpool as victims, the capital club challenged the great Barça of Ronaldo, the Brazilian, as an outsider.
Recruited by Barça for the record sum of 100 MF, Ronaldo, transparent that evening, will however be the only scorer in the final thanks to a penalty converted with an unstoppable flat foot (1-0, 37th).
No double for the teammates of Leonardo and Rai who had nevertheless tried everything in this final.
They had even been superior to Barça in the game. But realism and success had been left to the locker room, like this attempt by Patrice Loko pushed back by the post at the end of the match.
20,000 supporters of the club from the capital had made the trip to the city of Rotterdam, the largest industrial port in the world.
They were only 10,000 “socios”.
Paris SG had, at least, won the battle for the stands and the atmosphere had been good, in a good spirit.
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That evening, the De Kuip stadium (the “basin” or the “bathtub”, in Dutch) was sold out but had still been less noisy than usual, without the usual 48,000 fans of the resident team of Feyenoord. .
Built in 1936 and renovated in 1994, De Kuip is a loudspeaker that resonates.
The tifos there are often spectacular.
The audience sings non-stop.
The expression “twelfth man” is not an empty word: no team player will ever wear a number 12 flocked shirt, this one being reserved for the public.
But behind this passion that animates the more than 60,000 members of "The Legion" (the name of the assembly of supporters) hides a less rosy reality.
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A few groups of ultras, mainly the dreaded SCF Hooligans (Sport Club Feyenoord), bring together a few hundred troublemakers, accustomed to acts of vandalism or fights.
Several of them being banned from stadiums in the Netherlands, they most often shine during away matches in European cups, such as in 2015 when they ransacked a district of Rome or in 2019 for similar facts in Basel.
In France, fans of AS Nancy Lorraine still remember the trip to Rotterdam in 2006, when a few dozen supporters caused the interruption of a Europa League match after tearing up seats in the Marcel-Picot stadium and causing the police...
Read alsoHot atmosphere, van Persie or “bathtub”: 5 things to know about Feyenoord Rotterdam
Fears of excesses are such that since 2009, Feyenoord fans can no longer travel to Amsterdam to attend the "Klassieker" against Ajax, the great historical rival.
Olympique de Marseille can expect a warm welcome in Rotterdam on Thursday.
Hoping to have more success in this boiling stadium than his eternal Parisian enemy had, 25 years ago...
