Not liking the reports coming out from Athens

[sean_lfc]

Hold on mate. Estimates say we had 50,000 or so in Athens. So are you suggesting UEFA should've given us 50,000 tickets?

The sad reality is that unless we have games like played in stadia of 90,000 plus all the time, there'll ALWAYS be more demand than supply.

UEFA DID balls up the allocation, no doubt.

But even if they hadnt, there'd still not be enough to meet the demand.

How could they get around that?

I never implied that we needed 50000 tickets. But 17000 is ****ED UP. FACT. And having the same amount of tickets for the UEFA 'Family' is ****ED UP. FACT.

[sean_lfc]

If you get in with a forgery cos the authorities force you to go to a tout to get a ticket and the tout turns out not to be a tout but a forger, and the forgery is so good it gets past three ticket checks by the stadium organisers, how is that the FANS fault?

Exactly!

[CJ]

Alun,

good point. however i have just had a thought this may be wrong but bear with me

we know there are 17000 tickets for LC fans its not enough. many more go to athens this creates a black market for tickets. now yes uefa didnt issue enough tickets but still would you go to the petrol station if you knew all the petrol was sold?

so in some ways is it our own fault by creating the demand for the touts. if we all accepted that there are not enough tickets and didnt go then there would not have been a problem

not sure about that myself but i think its a point worth discussing

[alunevans]

Alun we did not need 40,000 tickets we wanted them. there is no need for any tickets.

i know it sounds arsy

Yes it does, unless we're going into some mad philosophical debate about the difference between need and want, but that would be for the Library forum not here

[disco]

If you get in with a forgery cos the authorities force you to go to a tout to get a ticket and the tout turns out not to be a tout but a forger, and the forgery is so good it gets past three ticket checks by the stadium organisers, how is that the FANS fault?

Depends if they knew it was a forgery mate

So Desertscouser and Revo has effectively backed up Uefa's view on the situation - idiots stormed the gates and then loads of people got in without tickets..... meaning loads of people WITH tickets couldn't get in. A real shame. I'm sure Revo thinks it's fair game though

[desertscouser]

You must've got in a bit after me mate. From the sounds of it, i got in not long before all the charging and shyte kicked off. Quite lucky for me.

Very sad to read though.

Actually, thankfully I missed most of the chaos as a few of us decided to get into the stadium as soon as possible after witnessing the sheer volume of Liverpool fans in the stadium grounds. It's my mates who wanted that extra drink who had to endure most of the crap.

The thing is though, I can't really condone a Liverpool fan trying to get in after unknowingly buying a forgery. Imagine spending 500 quid to get to Athens and another 500 -1000 quid buying a ticket and it turns out to be a forgery? 9 times out of 10 you'd be so devastated and desperate that you would try and con your way in.

Whichever way you look at it, the real losers were the fans and the people to blame are UEFA. a 17000 ticket allocation is a disgrace and a gross misjudgement of the eventual reality of the situation. The trouble last night was caused by their ticketing policy and I hope they learn from their mistakes in the future, or else one day it will all turn very nasty.

[Pacman]

No. I didn't mean that. What I was trying to get at in my numerous posts (and which alun is trying to get at) is that the severity of the ticketing issue and people's/fans' consequent actions might have been much less severe if the ticketing issue had been even given TWO ****S about in the months leading up to the event.
No one can ever excuse any action of 'thugs and scum' (as someone so eloquently put it) but my point is there would have been MUCH LESS 'trouble' (forged tickets, overcrowding etc.) if UEFA had decided to give up 10000 of their tickets. Alas, it's ****ed up beyond recognition and I will not stop blaming UEFA for having placed more than 20000 (and by god it will have been many genuine fans, not 'thugs and scum') into the uncomfortable position of having to RELY on touts and the lot to get a ticket. If the official ticket channels were much better organised as a whole, these issues of people crushing etc. would not come into play, and if, it would be on a much smaller scale.

Anyway, I'm going in circles here, some people stand on the side of UEFA, some don't. I don't.

I agree totally with what you are saying about Uefa I don't think anyone would argue that point. They are the touts in all this and I heard a belter of a story about Platani the other day from a mate who knows a few touts. They are crooks and IMO ruining the game for the real fan.

But what most people are concerned about are the fans who thought **** this I'm getting in no matter what **** the other fans who have got tickets that's not my problem. Alun and yourself are right the bigger picture needs to be looked at and changed but still the element who took it upon themselves to try and get in no matter what are what's giving us a bad name.

[alunevans]

If I went to get on a plane, or to the theatre, or any other event, to find that I couldn't get on/in because the airline/theatre/people organizing the event had let people on/in without valid tickets, I would blame them directly; if it transpired that those self-same organizers had in fact conspired in ensuring that demand outstripped supply, and had seeded a Black Market which actively encouraged touting and forgeries (by guaranteeing a substntial return and ready market), were aware and forewarned that there would be many such fans without valid tickets, and then did not put in place adequate procedures to prevent those who did not have valid tickets getting in, I would be expecting to see the heads rolling of senior people at that organization.

1 point - cutting through the various stories, it seems nobody got in because gates were 'stormed';there may have been a lot of people around, and some queue-delimiting temporary barriers got shoved around, but there was also a heavy and active police presence to counter that; invalid entry seems to have been primarily due to a failure to check for valid tickets, which is, pure and simple, a procedural, organizational issue. If, as UEFA claim, the fault is because people without tickets turned up - why bother with tickets? If UEFA proposed an 'honour' system whereby people who had paid didn't have to show any proof, but just told the stewards, 'Oh I've paid', and no-one who hadn't paid was expected to turn up, we'd rightly ridicule them for their naivety and stupidity; But an access system (supposedly high-tech) which fails to exclude those who don't have valid tickets, and only 'works' if only those who have valid tickets turn up is no better

Excellent post JRC. Goes to the nub of it.

[sean_lfc]

Alun,

good point. however i have just had a thought this may be wrong but bear with me

we know there are 17000 tickets for LC fans its not enough. many more go to athens this creates a black market for tickets. now yes uefa didnt issue enough tickets but still would you go to the petrol station if you knew all the petrol was sold?

so in some ways is it our own fault by creating the demand for the touts. if we all accepted that there are not enough tickets and didnt go then there would not have been a problem

not sure about that myself but i think its a point worth discussing

It might be a point worth discussing if it were reasonable. But you can't tell the other 23000 NOT to go. It's just totally and utterly unrealistic.

And the petrol station comparison is a bit lame...put it this way. If you knew the petrol station was out of petrol, were would you then try to get in contact with a petrol dealer? Or if you were a black-market petrol dealer, were would you decide to camp and sell it? Exactly, the place were everyone goes to buy petrol...

[Revo]

i havent backed up uefa, i said a few fans, you are claiming thousands. disco stop making me out to be some ****, i can do that myself. im getting sick of you doing it

[sean_lfc]

Actually, thankfully I missed most of the chaos as a few of us decided to get into the stadium as soon as possible after witnessing the sheer volume of Liverpool fans in the stadium grounds. It's my mates who wanted that extra drink who had to endure most of the crap.

The thing is though, I can't really condone a Liverpool fan trying to get in after unknowingly buying a forgery. Imagine spending 500 quid to get to Athens and another 500 -1000 quid buying a ticket and it turns out to be a forgery? 9 times out of 10 you'd be so devastated and desperate that you would try and con your way in.

Whichever way you look at it, the real losers were the fans and the people to blame are UEFA. a 17000 ticket allocation is a disgrace and a gross misjudgement of the eventual reality of the situation. The trouble last night was caused by their ticketing policy and I hope they learn from their mistakes in the future, or else one day it will all turn very nasty.

[Craig_H]

I never implied that we needed 50000 tickets. But 17000 is ****ED UP. FACT. And having the same amount of tickets for the UEFA 'Family' is ****ED UP. FACT.

I agree.

But realistically, they could only have given each club a max of 25k or so.

In which case, we'd still have had 25k without tickets.

As i say, whatever they do, they'll never be able to satisfy the demand.

[alunevans]

Hold on mate. Estimates say we had 50,000 or so in Athens. So are you suggesting UEFA should've given us 50,000 tickets?

The sad reality is that unless we have games like played in stadia of 90,000 plus all the time, there'll ALWAYS be more demand than supply.

UEFA DID balls up the allocation, no doubt.

But even if they hadnt, there'd still not be enough to meet the demand.

How could they get around that?

Surely the point is to limit the black market. That has to be UEFA's job. They do that by giving as many tickets as humanly possible to the supporters of the teams in the competition, and as few as possible to sources that would become touts.

I reckon about 10 or 11 thousand of our 50,000 paid face value for their tickets due to the way they were allocated.

A black market with 40,000 people desperate for a ticket is a far bigger problem than a black market with 5 or 10 thousand seeking a ticket.

Its just silly to say this is a problem, so we won't care if that problem is limited or maximised.

If the problem isn't something that can be gotten around completely, one has to limit it as much as possible - not deliberately exacerbate it.

[Revo]

I agree.

But realistically, they could only have given each club a max of 25k or so.

In which case, we'd still have had 25k without tickets.

As i say, whatever they do, they'll never be able to satisfy the demand.

milan would have sent back 10.000

[Craig_H]

Actually, thankfully I missed most of the chaos as a few of us decided to get into the stadium as soon as possible after witnessing the sheer volume of Liverpool fans in the stadium grounds. It's my mates who wanted that extra drink who had to endure most of the crap.

The thing is though, I can't really condone a Liverpool fan trying to get in after unknowingly buying a forgery. Imagine spending 500 quid to get to Athens and another 500 -1000 quid buying a ticket and it turns out to be a forgery? 9 times out of 10 you'd be so devastated and desperate that you would try and con your way in.

Whichever way you look at it, the real losers were the fans and the people to blame are UEFA. a 17000 ticket allocation is a disgrace and a gross misjudgement of the eventual reality of the situation. The trouble last night was caused by their ticketing policy and I hope they learn from their mistakes in the future, or else one day it will all turn very nasty.

The thing which led to it initially was the allocation and UEFA are at fault for that.

But seriously mate, knowing the possible repercussions and danger for fellow fans, you cant justify fans trying to force their way in, no matter HOW much they may have spent.

What's more valuable, their £1000 or the safety/lives of human beings?

F*ck the £1000 FFS.