The Champions League away end is the most ritualised space in European football. It is also one of the most expensive, hardest to access, and least accountable to the people the competition is supposedly built for.
Travel costs. Visa costs. Match ticket costs. Hospitality minimum spend. The Champions League is structurally configured to favour wealthy fans, and the European press largely does not write about this.
When a club hosts a Champions League match, the away end is allocated a small fraction of stadium capacity. That allocation is then distributed by the visiting club, often via lottery, often with priority points that reward years of attendance. The system works for season ticket holders. It works less well for everyone else.
The result is that the visible fan base at a major European match is not representative of the actual fan base. It is representative of who could afford to be there. The cameras show this audience. The broadcast shows this audience. The audience becomes the official face of the support.
In England, in Germany, in Italy, the structural inequality of access has been written about, occasionally. Outside Europe, it is rarely written about at all. Champions League nights are global events with local audiences, and the local audience is filtered for wealth before the broadcast begins.
This is a story. The European press is mostly not telling it.