MANCHESTER
\nManchester City played in front of rows of empty seats as fans stayed away from the Champions League clash against AEK Athens on Tuesday. A well-below capacity crowd attended City\u2019s 5-1 win, with swathes of empty rows visible inside the newly-expanded 61,000-seater Etihad Stadium.
\nThe official attendance was not immediately revealed by City or European soccer\u2019s governing body UEFA. The low turnout was a surprise given City fans have been in defiant mood since the club was found guilty of widespread financial wrongdoing, which could see it face a range of punishments including a huge fine, points deduction or even expulsion from the Premier League.
\nMore than 60,000 attended City\u2019s last Champions League game against Paris Saint-Germain, when the embattled club put on a pre-match fireworks show and a highlights reel of its greatest moments on the stadium\u2019s big screens in what could be interpreted as a defiant response to the ruling, which it has appealed.
\nFans have turned up with inflatable bananas, resurrecting a craze from the 1980s long before it became the dominant force in English soccer via the backing of its Emerati ownership. But there were few on show on this occasion. Perhaps the low turnout reflected the fact it was City\u2019s third home game in less than a week, following matches against PSG and Ipswich.
\nThose who did stay away missed another slick performance from Enzo Maresca\u2019s team, which tops the Premier League and quickly bounced back from defeat to PSG with another win in the Champions League. Phil Foden scored a hat trick, with Elliot Anderson and Rayan Cherki also on target.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MANCHESTER Manchester City played in front of rows of empty seats as fans stayed away from the Champions League clash against AEK Athens on Tuesday. A well-below capacity crowd attended City\u2019s 5-1 win, with swathes of empty rows visible inside the newly-expanded 61,000-seater Etihad Stadium. The official attendance was not immediately revealed by City or …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":104693,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104710"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104721,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104710\/revisions\/104721"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}