[all_funkt_up]

Possible Improvements


I thought rather than just criticising UEFA, I would look at what could be done for future finals. In essence, they did a lot of things right. The fan parks in the centre of town were a great success. In contrast to the popular image, it should be noted that tens of thousands of fans there drinking and singing with no bother at all. Maybe as an idea for next time, they might want to stick some portaloos there though. Inviting 10'000 people to drink in Syntagma Square and not providing any toilet facilities at all is a bit naive.

The metro system, signing and general organisation out of the stadium was first class. I think this was mainly down to the Athens Olympics in 2004 and had little to do with UEFA itself. Never the less, I found the people very helpful and the public transport was absolutely spot on.

Looking at ticketing though, I think some changes have to be made. UEFA need to stop the public ballot and providing tickets for locals. The final belongs to the 2 clubs competing and them alone. Quite why any neutral would want to go to a game like that (having no interest in either team) and deprive a fan of a ticket is beyond me. For big games like that, it encourages touting of tickets. Most of the tickets on Ebay in the week running up to the game were in the neutral section.

I wouldnt say that less tickets should be given to corporate fans however, I think they are unavoidable. As long as footballers demand more money and clubs demand higher sponsors revenue, they are a necessary evil. We just have to deal with it and move on.

Assuming you sort the tickets out fairly, the next thing I would look at is security around the ground. In theory the Greek authorities had everything planned out. They had an exclusion zone around the ground and were supposed to check and scan your ticket 3 times before you got near the ground. As everyone knows, this didnt happen. This then enabled your chancers to get close to the ground and blag their way in. Proper ticket checks (as FIFA employed during the world cup) would stop people with fake tickets or no tickets at all getting anywhere near the stadium and pushing their way in.

For my money, there were blokes blagging their way into the stadium early doors who then phoned their mates in town and said "its worth a go coming down, the security is piss poor, give it a go"

If the authorities had done what they decided to do in the first instance, this situation would not have arisen.

Another area of mis management for me is the stadium itself. I think we need to use a football stadium with a capacity of 70'000 or above. We need turnstyles or some sort of admission control facility. Fans would have found it harder to push in, had there been turn styles. As it was, there were gaping doors open to all brazen enough to try it. You simply couldnt get into an EPL game the same way, you'd never get past the turnstyle. Simple as.

Looking at venues is very interesting. Next year we have Moscow.

A very long trip for any fan looking to make the journey. Plus the choice of venue shows for me a lack of foresight by UEFA again. I wonder how much of a sweetener Putin had to pay Johanssen to get Moscow on the board.

Even ignoring Human Rights Abuses (Chechya etc) it is an odd fucking choice.

My first and major concern is the fact that you have to have a visa for entering Russia. These take typically 3 weeks to produce and cost over £100. So assuming you get to the final, you have 3 weeks notice from your Semi Final game to the match itself. Not much time to fill the forms in and to get your request processed by the Russian Embassy is it?

3 weeks is the usual turn around time. What policies are the Authorities putting in place to cope with, for example, 80'000 (a concervative estimate) extra applications from football fans in such a short period of time?

Madness, absolute madness.

Once again we will see a cock up at yet another major European Final. Fans with tickets and no visa, visa applications being approved too late in the day etc.

What's wrong with Paris, Madrid, Cardiff, Munich, Barcelona, Manchester, Wembley etc as the venue? UEFA is trying to be all inclusive and too bloody clever for its own good.