About 2,000 Hapoel Tel Aviv supporters have already secured tickets for next week's Conference League third qualifying round opener against Poland's GKS Katowice, ONE reports, with the club bracing for one of its heaviest travelling followings of the summer.
The first leg is set for Thursday, August 6, at the DVTK Stadium in Miskolc, Hungary — the same neutral venue that hosted Hapoel's previous European "home" tie. Combined with Katowice's own support and local interest, ONE reports the total crowd is expected to reach around 3,500.
Hapoel reached this stage by beating Bulgaria's Ludogorets Razgrad 2-0 in Miskolc on July 23, then holding on for a 2-2 draw away in Razgrad a week later to advance 4-2 on aggregate.
The return leg against Katowice is scheduled for August 13 in Poland, with the winner moving another step closer to the Conference League's league phase.
The build-up is not without controversy: ONE reports Hapoel are awaiting a possible further UEFA sanction after fans set off pyrotechnics during the away leg in Razgrad. The club already carries a suspended penalty from the first Ludogorets tie — a €25,000 fine and a conditional 10% partial closure of the stadium for future European home matches, suspended for two years — stemming from similar incidents in that opening game.
Even so, the scale of the ticket sales for a fixture staged more than 2,000 kilometres from Tel Aviv underlines how far Hapoel's support base is prepared to travel this European campaign, and the club will be hoping the same numbers translate into an atmosphere strong enough to help see off Katowice over the two legs.
