TICKET TO CHIDE
One week on, and the unedifying spectacle of the Geopolitics World Cup tombola has faded, overtaken by the club game’s relentless news cycle. Mohamed Salah has taken a blowtorch to his immediate hopes of returning to the Liverpool starting XI; Real Madrid are apparently in crisis; and Celtic are bad again, their fans perhaps the first in history to dread an approaching cup final. There might be more of that next summer though, with the full scale of ticket prices for Gianni’s jamboree offering a sobering “slap in the face” for fans still celebrating qualification. Not our words, but those of the Football Supporters’ Association and its England Fans’ Embassy, which might sound like a Soccer AM bit, but is part of a European network offering “reliable and independent information to fans”.
So while Rio Ferdinand has been busy cross-referencing the draw footage with his script, and Julian Nagelsmann wonders why his Germany side are playing a drink in their opening game, fan groups have been crunching the numbers for travelling supporters – and they make for bleak viewing. On Thursday, it emerged that the cheapest ticket available for the final in – and you’ll like this – the “supporter value tier” will cost $4,185 (£3,120). Fans hoping to watch their team’s entire journey through the draw are looking at a minimum cost of about $7,000 (£5,240) – and that’s just for match tickets. Throw in the price of flights and accommodation, and most supporters are looking at an enormous £10,000 outlay – more than five times the cost of following your team in 2022. The Fifa chief suit appears to have finally got his wish: making us look back at the Human Rights World Cup with the tiniest degree of fondness.
Football Supporters Europe has labelled the ticket pricing “a monumental betrayal of the tradition of the World Cup”, calling on Fifa to pause sales on tickets allocated to participating nations, which – believe it or not – are not subject to dynamic pricing. One Scotland fan told BBC Radio 5 Live that taking his family to the tournament could cost upwards of £15,000. “I would love to take the kids because it may not happen for another 30 years,” he added, writing our jokes for us. Even the very cheapest match tickets are now north of £100 – too rich for our blood, but given that we’ve written this lengthy article slating ticket prices, we’re probably not getting in to the USA USA USA next summer anyway. Let’s just go the whole hog and add that the Village People are a bit dated. Yes, we went there!
Amid the justified outrage and eye-watering totals, we need someone who truly understands the game to remind us what it’s all about. “I know what it means to travel week in, week out, to go and watch your favourite team, because I did this myself.” That’s more like it! “I know what it means to love football and follow a team. Football without the fans is nothing.” Which thrusting egalitarian, which man of the people said this? Oh. It was Gianni Infantino, back in 2016. The game has truly gone.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I would say that the odds of us turning the season around are lower than Leicester winning the Premier League, so they are in our favour, right?” – Newport County are rock-bottom of the Football League but new manager Christian Fuchs chats to Ben Fisher about how being part of one miracle is keeping his spirits high.
FOOTBALL DAILY LETTERS
Going along with the recent theme on awkward match seating (Football Daily letters passim), I attended a Marseille v Liverpool Big Cup match in 2008. The only snag was the tickets that myself and my Liverpool-supporting mate had were in the Marseille section. We agreed on the way in to say nothing and be subtle. The Marseille fan beside us started to make conversation with me before kick-off. Having lived for a while in Paris, my French was pretty good and he assumed I was from somewhere up the north of France. This assumption was blown up when Steven Gerrard scored and my mate jumped up, exclaiming wildly in his broad scouse accent. I got a decidedly unfriendly side-eye from the Marseille fan for the rest of the game. Needless to say, we didn’t hang about for a beer after the match” – Eoin Balfe.
My son and I go to most Brentford games together, so it was a big deal when as a young teenager he was deemed old enough to go to an away match at Villa on his own. His mother, cheerfully un-streetwise, turfed him out of the car as near as she could get to the Holte End. Stood self-consciously in his Brentford shirt, he hastened to pull a hoodie on as a mountainous, bald, heavily tattooed man rumbled in his direction. ‘No need for that mate,’ he said cheerfully with a pat on the back. ‘D’you know where the away turnstiles are? I’ll show ya. So who should we look out for today,’ etc. I’ve always had a soft spot for Villa since then, though admittedly Ollie Watkins has tested it a couple of times” – Simon Skinner.
In yesterday’s Football Daily, you claimed that attending an evening seminar on economic history can be excruciatingly boring for a bunch of young millionaire footballers. As someone with a PhD in history who specialises in the political economy of the Eastern Mediterranean in the 19th century, I can say that this definitely applies to undergrads, the general public, and, maybe, some fellow historians and economists. It might also explain the current state of the world economy” – Dimitris Stergiopoulos (“and probably nobody else – I would be genuinely surprised if other fellow economic historians read the newsletter regularly”).
As an American, I have many, many, many things I am inclined to apologise to the world at large for. So many and of such severity that a comedic list of three such things would not actually be funny. But parsing through the merciless cavalcade of apologetic impulses, I would like to say that I am sorry to your readers, my global and invariably good-looking comrades, for having to consider the opinion of Landon Donovan (yesterday’s Football Daily, full email edition). There’s really no excuse. As a people, we should have long ago endeavoured to make sure he never actually speaks into a live microphone” – Tyler T.
Send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s prizeless letter o’ the day winner is … Dimitris Stergiopoulos. Terms and conditions for our competitions, when we run them, can be viewed here.
RECOMMENDED PLAYING
The Guardian has kicked off a new chapter in puzzles with the launch of its first daily football game, On the ball. It is now live in the app for both iOS and Android … so what are you waiting for? Get stuck in!
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