Scores of supporters struggle to get tickets for the match Algeria Vs Serbia

The selling of the tickets for the friendly match that will oppose the Algerian national team to the Serbian side slated for next Wednesday here in Algiers, kicked off yesterday at 10 am at the Olympic stadium where a ticket window was dedicated mainly to families and women as opposed to 14 others reserved for men.

• Fans from different corners of the country… and the number is limited
• Scores of supporters from various provinces flocked to the 5^th of July Olympic stadium in order to get tickets for the match. They were thousands form remote Algerian provinces like Setif, Sidi Belabess,Djelfa, Medea, Bouira and many others hopeful to snatch the “sesame” that will enable them to attend the long awaited match regardless of the price.
• Echourok approached a group of fans who were queuing up at one of the ticket windows and asked one of them from the province of Belabess ( western Algeria) who spend the night on spot despite freezing temperatures that prevail in Algiers these days. This one was braved the distance to get the opportunity to see the “Greens” after their historic qualification to the world Cup. He was overwhelmed by joy once he bought his ticket synonymous of a chance to see Bougherra, Ziani and the others life-size.
• Many have expressed their joy though little bit critical to the organizing committee “ We are lucky because we succeeded to get the tickets, but we blame the organizers for concentrating the selling of the tickets in one area only, which caused this chaos. We would have preferred if they did the same in different provinces in the country”.
• Weak presence of women…
• Though 4500 tickets have been put at the disposal of women to attend the match next March 3, their presence was timid in comparison to the rush of the other gender. We came close to a group of them to ask them about reason of their presence at the Olympic stadium, and one of them has replied that she was there to buy tickets for her children, sisters and other relatives.
• We asked a 50 year old woman who was carrying a number of tickets and launched “ These tickets are for my children who found it hard to acquire them because of the huge number of fans, I bought seven tickets 300 Algerian dinars each”

• Pink tickets for women and Orange for men
• Two different colors were selected to differentiate the tickets, as women will have theirs in Pink while men will get Orange tickets, this would create a problem on the D Day in the sense that men who accompany their wives or families cannot get a access because they’ve got their ticket in a different color.
• The organizers were overwhelmed by the huge number of fans that rushed to the stadium since the break of the day; thousands were queuing and threading a passage to wrench a ticket.

•  Those who succeeded to get one more than one ticket would seize the opportunity to garner some money in the black market, since the ticket that was left 300 AD was retailed two or three times their original value.