The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
England fans’ ticket ‘carnage’
England got their World Cup off to a winning start with a 6-2 victory against Iran in Qatar, amid “carnage” off the pitch for some fans trying to enter the stadium.
Some fans heading to the group B fixture endured ticketing problems at the stadium, with some missing part of the game.
Concerns were also raised about the availability of food within the stadium and at the main fan park in central Doha.
With the 4pm local time kick-off approaching, some supporters were frantically refreshing the official ticketing mobile app on their phones in a bid to have their QR code load.
This left them enduring some stressful and frustrating moments, with a group of England fans also seen arguing with officials as they kept being told entry to the queue was closed and repeatedly moved down to another entrance.
A PA news agency reporter heading in with a ticket found their ticket app only started working about 60 seconds before they reached the front of the queue having failed to work in the previous couple of hours.
Fifa acknowledged some fans were experiencing issues.
Ali Azarian, 42, an Iranian-Brit based in Singapore, who said he had “divided loyalties” for the game, got into the ground around five minutes before half-time.
He said he arrived three hours before kick-off but the tickets “disappeared” from the Fifa app.
He said: “At the gate they wouldn’t let us in even though we had the email confirmations.
“They sent us over to some ticket liaison office, they then sent us to a Fifa tent where there were about 500 people.
“We queued up for ages, there was a lot of controversy because someone from Fifa came out and told people they could use the email to go back into the queue.
“Those folks left the queue and were told the same thing we were told and they came back so it was just carnage.
“We stuck with it, eventually they started writing manual tickets, they printed tickets and they manually wrote our seats down and then everyone was just sprinting to the ground.
“There were probably at least 100 people behind me.”
The ticketing issues came after England were accused of having “bottled it” by not wearing an antidiscrimination armband in their group B opener.
England and Wales announced via a joint statement from other European nations who had signed up to the One Love campaign that the armbands would no longer be worn after Fifa warnings of sanctions.
England fan Steve Wright, 43, from Derby, said: “They’re just bowing to the oppression of the Qatari government.”
Shaun Rowland, 56, from Hertfordshire, said: “They’ve bottled it, haven’t they?”