The messenger logo

Georgian fans say Football Federation cheated them

By Tea Mariamidze
Tuesday, July 14
The selling of tickets for the Barcelona-Sevila Super Cup game scheduled in Tbilisi for August 11 at Dinamo Arena has caused much dissatisfaction among Georgian football fans.

There are no tickets left for sale and fans do not doubt that the Football Federation has cheated them.

Groups of fans were protesting the process before the Football Federation building in Tbilisi on July 13.

They stated that they were standing in line for two days and it was impossible the tickets to be sold so shortly based on their calculations.

“100 men went to buy the tickets. 1,000 tickets were left to be sold. Each of them had a right to buy 4 tickets at maximum. Then suddenly the area blackout and we were told that there were no tickets to buy,” one of the fans said.

Some others revealed their suspicion that the tickets were sold to patrol policemen without queues and there were calls from the politicians as well.

The Football Federation leadership dismisses the speculations, saying that the process was transparent.

Vice-Premier Kakhi Kaladze said that not all the fans would be able to buy the tickets as they were quite small in number.

“Now the main challenge is how we will host the game. The stadium is completely ready for the match,” Kaladze said.

22,000 tickets were allocated for the Georgians fans and they could buy them at Micheil Meskhi stadium box-offices since the authorized web-page biletebi.ge failed to sell the tickets online as it was said owing to technical shortcomings.