Touts lose round two
27th June, 2006
I COULDN’T believe what I was hearing. Two fans in Cologne, independently of each other, told me they had both bought a black-market ticket for Portugal’s game against Holland for just 150 euros.
Considering that tickets for the Group F match between Brazil and Australia had been going for more than 10 times that, it seemed a remarkable drop in price. One of those two fans explained it to me. “The fans from Iran, South Korea, Croatia and all the other countries that have been knocked out are selling their second-round tickets,” he said. “It’s flooding the market, and there are a lot more available than you think.”
The touts, having raked in the cash during the group stage, are finding the second round a bit more tricky. And nowhere did they find it trickier than in Cologne last night, at the match hardly anyone wanted to see – Switzerland against Ukraine.
Last week, Cologne was crammed to bursting point as England played Sweden, and you would have had more chance of finding one of Willy Wonka’s golden tickets than a spare ticket for that match. Last night, Cologne was as close to a ghost town as a World Cup city can be on a match night, despite the efforts of the fans who were there, such as the Swiss supporter pictured above. Half-a-dozen police officers posted at Weiden West, the closest railway station to Cologne’s RheinEnergie Stadion, looked bored out of their brains.
There was a look of desperation in the eyes of the touts outside the ground. To make their job harder, they had to compete for business with gloomy-looking France fans, who had bought tickets for last night’s match in Cologne on the assumption that it would involve their team. It would have done, if France had won Group G; but the might of Switzerland proved too great for Thierry Henry and Co. “Swap: Four Switzerland v Ukraine tickets for one France v Spain ticket,” read a card held up by one Frenchman, probably aware that he had no chance – even at that exchange rate.
As I hung around outside the ground, I thought: I could get a bargain here. Then I thought: No. Let the touts sweat for a while – it’s about time they earned their money. So I headed off into the city centre and watched the match on the big screen there (pictured above) for a while. When I got back to the ground at half-time, a handful of touts were still there, looking utterly forlorn. One offered me a 60-euro ticket for 40 euros. I hadn’t been into a match for nearly two weeks. It seemed a price worth paying.
I was searched at the entrance by a security guard, who was happy for me to take in my hulking great copy of the Rough Guide To Germany (surely a potentially deadly missile given its size), my camera phone and an mp3 recorder, but he decided to confiscate my copy of the Daily Mirror. (If anyone knows what the Mirror have done to get their paper on to FIFA’s list of objects banned from World Cup grounds, they should probably tell the editor.)
But even at 40 euros, I felt shortchanged by a match that was the worst of the tournament so far. In fact, it may well have been the worst game of football played anywhere in the world this year, narrowly beating Stockport County’s dismal 0-1 home defeat against Boston in February. The players of Switzerland and Ukraine appeared content to give the ball away and fall over a lot, rather than try to do anything radical such as win the game. The TV cameraman racing up and down the touchline to get tracking shots of the players showed more energy and application that many of those he was filming (I was disgusted when he didn’t get man of the match).
Many of the fans in the stadium were German, and they resorted to heavy sarcasm to keep themselves amused. A fan from Hanover, who bought the seat next to mine from the same tout, kindly translated the chants for me. “There are singing, ‘Oh, this is so nice,’” he said. “We call it English humour.”
A chorus of boos and thumbs down greeted the whistle for the end of normal time and extra time. Even the penalties were dreadful, with Ukraine going through on the basis that at least they were able to score some of theirs. As they celebrated a victory that made all of England’s World Cup performances so far look majestic, the stadium DJ had the brass neck to play ‘Stand Up For The Champions’, a song set to the tune of ‘Go West’. The fans weren’t impressed. It’s not just the touts who are hoping Ukraine don’t get any further in this World Cup.
