Fest for the elite

Ticket selling staff of Apon Communications, the official ticket rights holder for Argentina's practice session, sell tickets in front of the Press Club yesterday. PHOTO: SK Enamul Haq

Football, the beautiful game as is lovingly called around the global game is probably the game that most people can associate themselves with. It is the game enamoured by millions and attended by the masses where ever in the world it is played.
The same scenario is usually reflected in Bangladesh too as we see the commoners attend the league games at the Bangabandhu National Stadium or other stadia week in week out, due to sheer love for the game. However, unfortunate as it is, most of those familiar faces will be missing from the stands when arguably the most supported team in the country, Argentina, will be playing against Nigeria in a FIFA international friendly at the BNS on September 6.
The organiser Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) has done it deliberately in an effort to inject some money into its dwindling fund. Yet unfortunate is the fact that the effort to entice the elites did not work as half the tickets for the match-day still remained unsold till yesterday.
It is a quite a stunning revelation in the context of the demand for complementary tickets that people are asking from the BFF.
“We are getting hundreds of requests for complementary tickets. And to be honest those who are asking for free tickets can easily afford to buy more than one ticket,” fumed a disgruntled BFF official yesterday.
“It is understood that people love to have anything for free. But I think the tendency to get anything for free in our country is far greater than anywhere else,” quipped another BFF official.
Looking for evidence? Just walk inside the BFF Bhaban you will find people flocking like anything to get hold of a free ticket. On Sunday hundreds of school kids protested in front of the BFF house in demand for a complementary ticket for the practice session.
It was a very noble initiative by the BFF as they decided to allow school children, and specially those who have active interest in football, to have free tickets to the Argentina team's practice session. But that nobility was marred in the end as many small-end school students were deprived of the tickets while a lucky few, having close association with the federation, got in through the back door. The scene was chaotic, to say the least, at the BFF as thousands of students protested for not getting the tickets despite showing valid ID cards.
The phenomenon is also reflected in the choice of mascots (boys and girls who accompany the players into the playing surface) for the marquee match. The organisers showed their banal way of thinking by choosing to select mascots from among the kins of the sponsors and BFF officials. They might have taken a leaf from the organisers of the Kolkata match between Argentina and Venezuela on Friday who showed how much this game means to the common people by picking children with a footballing background who come from the under-privileged class of the society.