Shortage of tickets is scandalous, says Long
SHANE Long has described Uefa’s paltry ticket allocation for the Republic of Ireland’s crunch game against France tomorrow as ‘scandalous’.
The star striker made the comments as Uefa admitted to the Irish Daily Mail that French fans had purchased a ‘significant number of tickets for this match’ during the general sales phase last year.
In a statement, the tournament governing body said there will ‘obviously be a lot’ of French supporters in the stadium tomorrow. In contrast the Green Army were given just 8% – or 4,604 tickets – for the key match in the 59,000-capacity Stade de Lyon.
Uefa maintains that each football association was given the same allocation and claimed that French fans simply anticipated their side would reach the knock-out stages.
But speaking yesterday ahead of Ireland’s knockout game, Tipperary-born star Long said of the situation: ‘It’s scandalous really with the good Irish support we have. It’s going to be like a home game for France, that’s not the way it should be.
‘All the lads’ families are looking for tickets. The FAI, they are working really hard behind the scenes to get things sorted but because France knew three days in advance... there’s not many left.’
Meanwhile assistant manager of the Irish team, Roy Keane, said he expected the tickets to be split 60/40 in France’s favour. He said: ‘It does seem unfair for the supporters. Someone said we have 3,500/4,000, the capacity is 58,000 – it does seem a bit lopsided.
‘You’d expect the home nation to have gotten an extra few but that’s a lot more. It’s unfair, particularly the way they’ve travelled and what they’ve brought to the tournament.
‘I was thinking we’d have maybe 15,000 or 20,000 in the stadium.’
Uefa and the French Football Federation declined to say how many tickets had been sold to French fans in total.
A spokesperson for Uefa initially told the Mail last night that the exact ticket allocation for French fans was ‘not available’. During the ticket sales period before the tournament started, a fixed allocation of 4,000 tickets was made available to each association for every potential knock-out match.
These tickets have been taken by supporters of the national associations through so-called conditional tickets where you buy a ticket for a knockout game but are given a refund if your team don’t make it that far. The Uefa spokesperson added: ‘Each federation has been given the same allocation for the round 16 matches. This means, French supporters have been allocated the same number of Follow My Team tickets for the knockout matches.
‘However, during the general public sales phase in June/July 2015, general public French fans already purchased a significant number of tickets for this match, hoping that France would qualify as a Winner of Group A.’