OK, it's been a couple of months, but.....
...football has led me to post another rant!
Right, the hullabaloo at the Champions League final last night. What's all that about. You would think that if one set of fans in Europe would be anti-overcrowding, it would be Liverpool's after the Hillsborough disaster.
What I'd like to know is why 40,000 Liverpool fans turned up demanding to be given seats when they had only 17,000 tickets issued.
The 'This is UEFA's fault because they should know Liverpool will have more fans there' argument is ridiculous. Then venues are decided in advance. No-one is going to change it to the Bernabeu just because there's an English team in the final. The fan tickets are halved (only fair) and there are tickets for sponsors and those awarded by ballot through UEFA's website (If the Liverpool fans want the same payday associated with a Champions League run, then they have to accept that the sponsors will take their cut, and it's only fair to allow some people who live in Athens to go to the big match in their backyard - if it were held at Anfield would the stadium be sans-Scousers?).
To then blag your way into the ground when you dont have a ticket is both unsafe and is theft.
It seems to be a peculiarly British thing for thousands of ticketless fans to head overseas for a football match that they're unlikely to get to see (who can forget the 7.3 million Celtic fans in Seville). If more of them had taken the 'If you have no ticket - DO NOT travel' advice, then I cant help but feel that the majority of the problems of last night might have been averted, and the people with genuine tickets would have been able to enjoy the match.
True, UEFA and the Greek police could have done a bit better, but the Livepool fans leave a 'who do they think they are' taste in my mouth, doing nothing to endear me to English football teams.
Right, the hullabaloo at the Champions League final last night. What's all that about. You would think that if one set of fans in Europe would be anti-overcrowding, it would be Liverpool's after the Hillsborough disaster.
What I'd like to know is why 40,000 Liverpool fans turned up demanding to be given seats when they had only 17,000 tickets issued.
The 'This is UEFA's fault because they should know Liverpool will have more fans there' argument is ridiculous. Then venues are decided in advance. No-one is going to change it to the Bernabeu just because there's an English team in the final. The fan tickets are halved (only fair) and there are tickets for sponsors and those awarded by ballot through UEFA's website (If the Liverpool fans want the same payday associated with a Champions League run, then they have to accept that the sponsors will take their cut, and it's only fair to allow some people who live in Athens to go to the big match in their backyard - if it were held at Anfield would the stadium be sans-Scousers?).
To then blag your way into the ground when you dont have a ticket is both unsafe and is theft.
It seems to be a peculiarly British thing for thousands of ticketless fans to head overseas for a football match that they're unlikely to get to see (who can forget the 7.3 million Celtic fans in Seville). If more of them had taken the 'If you have no ticket - DO NOT travel' advice, then I cant help but feel that the majority of the problems of last night might have been averted, and the people with genuine tickets would have been able to enjoy the match.
True, UEFA and the Greek police could have done a bit better, but the Livepool fans leave a 'who do they think they are' taste in my mouth, doing nothing to endear me to English football teams.