This is in response to the article “Soccer Fans Head Home Without Watching Match” in the Herald dated 2nd December 2014. This is an appalling truth that haunts all of the honest football fans – the dire shortage of tickets. Football is known as the beautiful game, but the journey to the football match held on December 1, was certainly not a beautiful one, for many football fans, as there were scenes of pushing and shoving along with extreme police brutality against many fans who came to support their team. There were scenes of long unruly queues to get into the stadium and many had to leave disheartened.
How far have we gone since the nightmare of the 2001 ODI tie between India and Australia? People who have no love for the game are being allowed to buy tickets in bulk and sell them in “black” just to make extra and easy money, whereas, ardent sports-loving fans are being shown the door when they go to buy passes as they were all sold out, and many fans could ill-afford the Rs 2,500 VIP passes. This is a slap on the jaw of many a football fan. How long can we allow this to continue?
To make sure passes reach the masses, the Sports Ministry must enforce the system of selling one pass per head on production of a valid ID (driving licence, college ID or workplace ID) and not allowing one person to buy more than one ticket. In this way we can defeat black marketing and ensure that only the sports loving masses get sports passes.
Jonathan Rodrigues, Nuvem
