[RMCF]

Just came back in from night in pub and watched Panorama on Sky+.

Just told me what I always knew - that FIFA are corrupt.

What are your thoughts on it?

One thing struck me about the games so far in WC2006. Blatter has been at a few that I have seen live. But surely if he cared about football he would be asking himself why is it that for some games where teams got a low allocation there was so many fans at the games??????

For someone like myself who has travelled across Europe watching various games in my time, I can't understand hw they organise football today.

The likes of England (especially), Holland, Argentina, Mexico get 5,000 official tickets for each game yet they bring a lot more fans to the games - surely Blatter has to ask himself (if he isn't corrupt) how come so many fans got into the game. The simple answer is 'the black market'. And they claim they are trying to clamp down on it.

If they watch this WC, they will see that England had 35,000 (at least) in Frankfurt for the Paraguay game even though they only allocated 5,000 tickets. How did the rest get in? Through black market tickets, thats how!! FIFA and UEFA complain about the black market yet they are creating it!! Give more tickets to the real fans and it will put an end to this. I have also seen other cases of it so far. Argies v Ivory Coast, Holland v Serbia, Sweden v T&T, Mexico v Iran.

They are runing the game I love and soon it will go belly-up.

[Phil Hinton]

Originally Posted by SOK

Just came back in from night in pub and watched Panorama on Sky+.

Just told me what I always knew - that FIFA are corrupt.

What are your thoughts on it?

One thing struck me about the games so far in WC2006. Blatter has been at a few that I have seen live. But surely if he cared about football he would be asking himself why is it that for some games where teams got a low allocation there was so many fans at the games??????

For someone like myself who has travelled across Europe watching various games in my time, I can't understand hw they organise football today.

The likes of England (especially), Holland, Argentina, Mexico get 5,000 official tickets for each game yet they bring a lot more fans to the games - surely Blatter has to ask himself (if he isn't corrupt) how come so many fans got into the game. The simple answer is 'the black market'. And they claim they are trying to clamp down on it.

If they watch this WC, they will see that England had 35,000 (at least) in Frankfurt for the Paraguay game even though they only allocated 5,000 tickets. How did the rest get in? Through black market tickets, thats how!! FIFA and UEFA complain about the black market yet they are creating it!! Give more tickets to the real fans and it will put an end to this. I have also seen other cases of it so far. Argies v Ivory Coast, Holland v Serbia, Sweden v T&T, Mexico v Iran.

They are runing the game I love and soon it will go belly-up.

FYI, they mentioned on the BBC that 15,000 tickets were allocated on the official FIFA website to fans in the last 14 days for the first England game. Add the official 5,000 still leaves you short of 35k, IF there was indeed that many there.

[neilios]

Yeah the ticket fiasco is very annoying ,ten times the face value just to see a world cup game .I know everyone wants a ticket but fifa just encourage the black market .

And why have budweiser as an official sponser in the country famed for its beer.

[JohnG]

It really annoys me that the initial ticket allocations were about 4,000 per game for each country, which is just going to make everyone go through other routes to get the tickets. Therefore segregation may become an issue.
There were 10,000 Mexicans outside the ground without tickets yesterday, 70,000 England fans in Frankfurt, probably the same amount of Dutch for their game as well, these Fifa people have no idea about getting the tickets to the right people - either that or they just don't care
It wasn't quite as bad for the Euro 2004 championships, but there were still thousands who got their tickets elsewhere for the games. There were approx 50,000 English in the stadium against France and nearly 50% of the crowd for the Portugal match were English as well, time for a shakeup for ticket allocation I think as the tickets which are being snapped up by the corporates are then being resold to genuine fans for vast profits.

[overkill]

Originally Posted by SOK

Just came back in from night in pub and watched Panorama on Sky+.

Just told me what I always knew - that FIFA are corrupt.

What are your thoughts on it?

One thing struck me about the games so far in WC2006. Blatter has been at a few that I have seen live. But surely if he cared about football he would be asking himself why is it that for some games where teams got a low allocation there was so many fans at the games??????

For someone like myself who has travelled across Europe watching various games in my time, I can't understand hw they organise football today.

The likes of England (especially), Holland, Argentina, Mexico get 5,000 official tickets for each game yet they bring a lot more fans to the games - surely Blatter has to ask himself (if he isn't corrupt) how come so many fans got into the game. The simple answer is 'the black market'. And they claim they are trying to clamp down on it.

If they watch this WC, they will see that England had 35,000 (at least) in Frankfurt for the Paraguay game even though they only allocated 5,000 tickets. How did the rest get in? Through black market tickets, thats how!! FIFA and UEFA complain about the black market yet they are creating it!! Give more tickets to the real fans and it will put an end to this. I have also seen other cases of it so far. Argies v Ivory Coast, Holland v Serbia, Sweden v T&T, Mexico v Iran.

They are runing the game I love and soon it will go belly-up.

Agree wholeheartedly SOK. Don't get me started on Sepp Splatter or 'captain corruption' as he should be re-named. Even his re-election was rigged!

Ticket allocation at all levels is getting beyond a joke.

Add that to his obvious influence at 'ground level' in trying to browbeat leauges into playing 'less games' which then promptly, surprise, turns out to mean he wants more 'money spinning' (for FIFA) international tournies, his 'directives' which at this World cup has meant that Latin cynics get away with blatant dives and play acting while the lesser lights get cards thrown at them like confetti, and you wonder if he has shares in Juve!

Told you not to get me started.

[RMCF]

Yeah and the problem is, that when football goes t1ts up, he'll be sitting pretty in some villa with tens of millions in the bank.

'UEFA - For the love of the game' - my ar$e.