Athens final shows why football would be better run...(24/5)

[gooner.ed]

usual thread starter... no touts? aren't there touts at american sports? scalpers? anyhow, after hearing the news from liverpool that the new owners intend to fund their purchase of the club through dividend payments, i have to confess that if arsenal are to make significant profit in the years ahead, then the existing majority shareholders are less likely to extract that profit and more likely to plough it back into the club. sure stan kronke will spend money, but with the long term goal of making it back, and then some. the real issue is whether or not arsenal are going to fall behind so much they can't close the gap. keith edelman says the money is there and arsene is the man deciding againt spending it. think this is the basis of an online editorial, so i'll stop here and write it up properly next week.

[Camden Gooner]

What a terrible article.

So there are no ticket shortages for the superbowl? And the organisation at these events is the same in, say, New York, as it would be in Alabama?Different states/countries will have different levels of organisation, stadiums sizes etc. And moreover, there are never enough tickets when British clubs play finals due to the tradition of away support we have here - much more than in any other sport.
First class accommodation and a seat for all? What happens to all those 5 star hotels and 250,000 sports stadiums in the years and years between major finals? What a fucking moron.

However there are plenty of spare tickets for the early stages of the CL, as normal fans are priced out of the games by , yes, US investors looking to make a quick buck by debt led takeovers.

I suspect that whoever wrote this probably has a little bit of instant tan smeared around his mouth as he typed this bollocks.

[MK Gould]

Good, if tougue in cheek, article. What about ending the Champions League with a Play Off Series. 300,000 ticket applications? No problem, just play the final over 5 matches! Don't think the bastards won't have already considered this.....!

It makes my blood boil to hear Uefa spokesman William Gaillard blame the Liverpool fans for the problems last night. Does he think that its fans that forge tickets? Get a grip. The only people who would invest in sophisticated equipment are touts/crime gangs who see this as an opportunity to receive £000's for something which isn't even real!!

And, who's fault is it that people were then allowed in with these forgeries, or with no tickets at all? Maybe Uefa should take some responsibility & investigate how this could be allowed to happen.

Or maybe they should explain why large numbers of tickets were sold to locals (as they were in Paris last year) when they know that ALL of these will end up in the hands of touts! At least with Corporates the authorities are making some money out of sponsorship & the like. But this daft idea of putting final tickets on general sale before the finalists are known has to stop!!!

[shiftygooner]

Pretty stupid article.

Surely the most relevant thing written about American investment recently was the article in one of the papers revealing that Man Utd have to pay £62 MILLION per annum in interest payments on the loans used to buy the club by the Glazers! That really was an eye-opener.

One last point. We all know that the organisation at some of these matches is very poor, but surely those Liverpool fans who attended the game without tickets or with forged tickets should also take some of the blame for the chaos outside. Seeing people on the news gloating over getting in for nothing while fans with geniune tickets were left outside made me very angry.

Of all the fans in the world surely Liverpool fans should be most aware of what can go wrong in these situations. Yet again thousands turned up with absolutely no regard for the safety of others and then, as usual, tried to put all the blame on others for the things that went wrong.

We cannot just always blame the police. The thousands of ticketless people who tried to gain entry are not just some harmless scallies who should be glorified, they are the people who could have gotten others seriously hurt or worse.

[DB10GOONER]

We cannot just always blame the police. The thousands of ticketless people who tried to gain entry are not just some harmless scallies who should be glorified, they are the people who could have gotten others seriously hurt or worse.

Well said, Shifty. With what happened at Hillsborough, you'd think those stupid Mousers would be the last people charging in and overpacking a stadium without tickets...

They were lucky not to have another tragedy on their hands. Idiots.

And then they proved how classy they are by fighting with the Milan fans afterwards. And, yes, I know it was a minority and the Italians that were fighting are no better, but it's still scummy.

So different from Paris last year.

[MK Gould]

I can see your point shiftygooner. But haven't some of the contributors to this very forum "glorified" the fact that they or their friends managed to blag their way into the CL Final in Paris last season...? Reading some of these I'd actually started to feel a bit guilty for given up too easily & going to a bar. Maybe "real" fans try to get in by any means! So I can understand why people do it, but maybe next time they should think about the possible consequences!

However, I suspect that most people who end up with forged tickets don't do so knowingly, & have probably paid top dollar for them, so therefore can't be blamed if poor access controls mean that they get in. They are probably blissfully unaware of their good fortune. Am I being naive? Maybe you know of people who have forged tickets for their own use??

[gooner.ed]

although liverpool fans should be the last supporters on earth to do something they know would overcrowd a stadium, i believe this. the stadium was vulnerable to ticketless fans (or those with forgeries) getting in. remember the numbers of arsenal fans outside the stade de france a year ago, over the course of the day. if there had been an inkling that it was possible to get in if an entrance could be 'rushed', does anyone believe that ticketless arsenal fans would not have tried to get in? arsenal fans were climbing over the back wall at heysel in 1980 in the same way that liverpool fans did in 1985. and if word had got round in paris that the stadium was possible to get into without serious resistance the same thing would have happened. remember the guys that got over the railings, the final one getting impaled on them? what stopped it was the relatively narrow entrance to the electronic ticketing turnstiles which had some pretty mean looking riot police the other side of them. let's face reality. if there are a large number of ticketless fans in town they are highly likely to do what happened in athens on wednesday night given any hint of encouragement - such as a non-secure stadium.

the problem is that the hunger for these events fuels desperation, as the prices paid to touts for genuine tickets - and the numbers that flew to greece in hope of getting into the match - demonstrates. there is no solution that will get everyone who wants to into a stadium when a well-supported english team are involved. so the next step is to get a secure stadium that makes it impossible to access without a legitimate ticket. it's unfortunate it has to be that way, but it does. at least the sheer distance to moscow may stop too many travelling without tickets next may.

the sale of tickets to neutrals should stop, although the corporate attendees are a fact of life in this day and age. but many seem to be sold through the local f.a. and via the uefa ballot. and the vast majority are simply sold on at profit, so uefa might as well accept this will happen, give these tickets to the competing teams and then at least have some concept of segregation.

it was bad for the legit ticket holders that they could not get in, but as - at the point that the gates were closed - there were already 3,000 too many bodies in the stadium, the authorities did the responsible thing. better that no-one dies than someone is denied their rightful place at a football match. i've read reports that in one section the fans were pleading for no-one else to be allowed in, bringing back memories of the accounts of hillsborough. everyone who got into that stadium when they knew they should not have been there has some soul-searching to do. but if arsenal were in athens instead of liverpool, i feel the same thing would have happened.

the moral of this tale for the genuine ticket holding fan attending future european finals... get in 2 hours before kick off, or someone else will have taken your place and the access will become impossible. at this point, let's just be grateful that there was no repeat of april 15th 1989. looks like it wasn't that far off exactly that scenario.

[MK Gould]

Well said Ed (can you also confirm that the article which started this thread off was intended to be humourous as I think some have missed the point...).

Gooners should stop the "holier than thou" attitude towards the scousers! We had upwards of 30000 ticketless fans in Paris last May & Ed is quite right that if there had been any inkling that a rush at the gates would have worked then exactly the same thing would have happened as we saw on Wednesday night.

I also remember Spurs playing at Hillsborough in a FAC semi final (v Wolves?) when too many fans were let in & they ended up clamboring over the fences to sit pitch side. I've never seen so many donkey jackets in one place!! I've lost count as well of the number of times I've felt the crush of the crowd surging to get through the turnstile (Chelsea away used to be one of the worst) without ever seriously thinking my life was in danger - when in actual fact it probably was!

And I too remember the visit to Heisel in 1980 - 5 years before the infamous Liverpool v Juventus match - when Arsenal fans gained entry without tickets, ripped down fences to get at the relatively small number of Valencia fans after the game & also tore up the already crumbling terrace in search of ammunition!

[gooner.ed]

i admit, the article could be a wind-up, but in all honesty it was posted in good faith. eyebrow raised, but in good faith. only adrian wagenaar knows the truth. one thing that is true, any true businessman looking at this phenomenon would take all the non-corporate seats and price them so high that neutrals wouldn't bother buying them, knowing that fans of certain teams (mainly english ones) would pay stupid money. however, things can go pear-shaped. i remember seeing numerous tickets of the 2004 final between porto and monaco (in gelsenkirchen) going on ebay for £0.99 starting price - and still failing to sell.

[Seven Kings Gooner 1]

A wind up? partly but I wrote that piece 6 hours before the game kicked off so I did not have the benefit of hindsight but you could see the shambles coming like a Lehmann yellow card. If Man U had got to the final UEFA would still have held it in Athens and we would now be talking about loss of life! The piece was really frustration at the total incompetence of UEFA and the missed opportunities, the venue should have been transferred back to Paris or a stadium with a similar capacity.
However people in the game are now at least talking about only having stadiums with a minimum capacity of 80,000, that is a start plus using electronic ticket entry with a photo of the owner on the ticket as per Glastonbury.To sum up how many more times is UEFA going to balls up a final before someone says enough is enough. The Yanks running it? I suppose it was topical to suggest it however if UEFA keep F.... up! why not? it could be the Martians for all I care just get it right.

[proudtosaythatname]

I once managed to get into Upton Park after the gates were closed. I guess Hillsboro thoughts just don't register at the time if you want that much to see the game. Just makes me realise how lucky I was to be in Paris last year, with a genuine ticket and in the ground more than an hour before kick-off. The suggestion of a minimum size stadium is a good one, only I'd set the limit at 60,108...

[gooners4life]

I suppose, being an American, that I should weigh in.

Americans don't get football. It's ridiculous, but true. I have had innumerable discussions with friends and such trying to convince them that football is so much better than any existing American sport. Alas, my arguments fall on deaf ears. Why Americans can be entertained by watching a car move around a track 500 times but find football boring is beyond me!

That said, I believe the starter of this thread has some point. One of the main reasons many Americans hate football is because of the injustice that lies in the sport. American sports fans, by and large, hate injustice and inequity. That's why, in all the sports but baseball, there is no Chelsea. It's not allowed, because Americans want parity and equality. The ridiculous racism present in football? You don't see it here. And I've never heard of anything remotely like what happening to Liverpool fans happening here. Scalping certainly occurs, but violence in a stadium, fans with tickets being locked out, etc. is unheard of in America.

The Pope once called America "savage capitalism." It's this very reason that stadium/sporting events run so smoothly here. It's all about the money, and unhappy fans/sponsors make the owners of stadiums and clubs nervous. Thus, things run smoothly because they HAVE to (though I have no desire to see Stan Kroenke in charge)

[MK Gould]

I think there are key differences between American sports & "soccer" which make it difficult to compare the two.

There is no American Football or Baseball equivalent to the Champions League i.e. you don't have the World Series being played in Mexico City or Bogota. What happened in Athens wouldn't happen in England.

And how easy is it to get tickets to the Superbowl when your team is involved? I suspect that it's at least as unfair as, say, the FAC Final here.

I also remember a San Diego Padres following friend of mine telling me that while Baseball games were generally incident free, there was at least one away ground that he doesn't go to for fear of trouble. Can't remember which one.

[gooners4life]

I agree that having the Final in different countries makes it difficult, which is why I think UEFA need to stop focusing on being "fair" and just have the Final in a place that "works."
For example, the Super Bowl is held each February in the U.S. and there are only a handful of cities that will ever host it. Usually the Florida, Texas, and California teams host it, with the occasional dome thrown in. This is due to the weather. The NFL isn't concerned about the process of site selection being "fair." They just want it done right with fans ultimately winning out.

UEFA needs to stop worrying about giving every country a final of its own and just focus on staging the Final at sites that have the security and infrastructure measures that work. Countries with security issues, extreme racism, violent fans, etc. should be punished by not having the Final in their country. It sends a bad message to everyone else.

[gooners4life]

accidentally posted twice