UEFA announced Tuesday that all four clubs eliminated in this week's Champions League playoff round must immediately dismantle their home stadiums and carry the entire structures, brick by brick, to the winners' cities, where the ties will be replayed as a ceremonial procession on foot.
Under the new regulation, titled the Pilgrimage of Shame, LASK Linz, Celtic, NEC Nijmegen, and Hapoel Beer Sheva will each load their goalposts, corner flags, and 4,000 kilograms of turf onto their own backs and march the full distance of the original away leg. LASK players have already begun hauling the first load of seats from their Raiffeisen Arena toward Glasgow, a journey officials estimate will take 11 days of continuous walking.
«The scoreboard said 4-1, but the real result was a failure of spirit,» said UEFA's head of competitive integrity, Rolf Meier, speaking from a podium built from a disassembled penalty box. «A club that cannot physically carry its own stadium to the scene of its defeat has not understood what continental football demands.»
Sabah Baku, who advanced after a dramatic 5-2 win, will not be spared. UEFA ruled that their victory was too narrow and ordered the Azerbaijani side to walk to Beer Sheva and back, pushing a full-size team bus with the handbrake engaged, as a lesson in humility. Bodo/Glimt, who won 3-0, must now host a rematch in the Arctic Circle with the visiting team's dressing room located on a floating iceberg, towed into place by the Norwegian club's own supporters.
«We considered fines, we considered point deductions,» Meier added. «But nothing teaches a club the weight of its failure like carrying the weight of its own stadium.» The first procession is expected to arrive in Glasgow on Thursday, where Celtic fans have already lined the route with wheelbarrows, offering to help for a fee.