Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Fan group plan is just the ticket.. now all UEFA have to do is play fair
BITTER experience tells us that rip-off merchants will always keep on fleecing if they’re allowed to.
Which is why governments have set up bodies that allow consumers a route to justice.
If you think you’re getting screwed by a water company, you can go to Ofwat, and if you don’t like a gas bill, complain to Ofgem.
But, if a football fan tries to air a grievance about, for example, the price of cup final tickets, the response from authorities will be a different type of phrase. One that ends – not starts – with “off ”.
Because they know, once that final is over, the winning fans will be lost in the delirium of victory and the losers will expunge the game from memory. And their measly allocation and outrageous pricing structure will be forgotten until, usually other sets of fans, are exploited in 12 months’ time.
So fair play to fan groups from Arsenal, Liverpool, Spurs and Chelsea, who refused to let their shabby treatment at this year’s European finals become just a bad memory, and, instead, joined forces to demand that UEFA listens.
It followed Spurs and Liverpool receiving only 16,600 tickets each for the Madrid final, with 80 per cent costing between £154-£513.
Meanwhile, 23,500 tickets went to the UEFA “family”, many being sold on for up to £30,000. And Arsenal and Chelsea fans were asked to make a 5,000-mile, midweek round-trip to Baku, costing a minimum £1,000 for flights and £400 a night for a hotel.
Last weekend at the annual meeting of Football Supporters Europe (FSE) in Lisbon – the only body UEFA listens to or recognises – the English groups put forward a six-point proposal for change.
They include: 80 per cent of tickets going to the finalists’ fans, 45 per cent of them available at the lowest category price, only big stadiums (75,000-capacity minimum for the Champions League final and 55,000 for the Europa) to be selected, with excellent transport links, including an ability to deal with many additional charter flights in cities with adequate bed capacity.
The proposals were backed unanimously by the FSE, who will demand UEFA address them when they meet in the coming months. Joe Blott, chair of Liverpool’s Spirit of Shankly union, who read out the motion alongside Arsenal Trust’s Tim Payton, said the four fans’ groups knew they had to act when UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin (below) admitted, after the Champions League final, that these games needed bigger stadiums.
And what most pleased Blott was overwhelming approval from fans of smaller clubs, such as Brondby, Malmo and Eintracht Frankfurt, who don’t expect to be in these finals, but backed the proposals as they think UEFA needs to respect the fans’ stake in their showcase events.
“What UEFA need to recognise is the finals they organise are the end of a long, nine-month journey that fans have been on with their team,” said Blott.
“They’ve sacrificed much to work with the players to reach the pinnacle and their right to be at that final is as valid as anyone’s. All we’re demanding is that they be given a fairer chance to be there.”
Whether they get what they want is a different matter, as UEFA are only used to keeping happy their corporate backers.
But, now that they formally have to listen to fans, you sense they may be forced to make some improvements on stadium size and ticketing.
If so, all fans owe these groups a thank you.
For refusing to sit round moaning among themselves about rip-off prices, getting off their backsides, coming together and doing something practical about it.
And, hopefully, shaming the fleecers into change.