The odyssey of two fans of the Portuguese record champion Benfica Lisbon to Frankfurt an der Oder in Brandenburg instead of Frankfurt am Main in Hessen was a fake.
The alleged faux pas of the two men before the quarter-final return match of the Europa League at Eintracht Frankfurt (2:0) caused laughter on the Internet, but the campaign turned out to be a PR gag of the football magazine 11 Freunde.
“One of the few magazines you can trust,” one of the two fans wrote on Friday on the Instagram account, which was created just a few weeks ago, under the picture of a magazine entitled “11 Amigos”. The protagonist, who documented his alleged car journey from Lisbon via Paris to Germany with photos and videos, is in reality an actor who lives in Berlin.
“We arrived in Frankfurt”, Alvaro Oliveira, who is actually called Marcelo Rodrigues, had written on Thursday noon under a photo at the supposed destination of the trip – but he stood in front of the place name sign “Frankfurt (O)”, about 480 km as the crow flies from the actually aspired destination.
