With my visa issues resolved and a return to Saudi Arabia imminent, I had a few meetings to attend at the company head office in Athens. As you might have expected, I checked out the possibilities for taking in a game during my three nights in town and got lucky with a Europa Conference League fixture at the Georgios Karaiskakis Stadium.
The match had sold out and so I picked up a thirty-euro ticket on the secondary market for fifty-two euros from Viagogo. I caught a train to the Piraeus area of Athens and arrived at a busy stadium a good hour before kick-off.
What I hadn’t realised was that all Greek football had been played behind closed doors for the past two months due to some violent incidents. This was the first game after the decision to allow the return of spectators. However, a new rule had been implemented that required everyone to show ID that matched the name on their ticket.
As my digital ticket had come from the secondary market it had something like Dave Zeus on it, whereas my passport, as you might have anticipated, was in my real name. I was turned away at my turnstile when I claimed that I didn’t have any ID with me.
I called Viagogo, but there was no answer. Fortunately, someone tipped me off that if I took out a membership in my own name for ten euros, I could use my shiny new membership card to buy a forty euro ticket. That’s what I did and was soon inside the ground. Ironically, the steward on my new turnstile didn’t check to see if my passport matched. Once he saw that I had ID he just waived me through.
Perhaps I should have tried that initially. On the plus side, Viagogo were very apologetic and had refunded my initial ticket price before we reached half-time.
There was a great atmosphere inside, which isn’t surprising when everyone had gone two months without going to a game. I was in the main stand with the home singing section behind the goal to my right. Ferencvaros had a section in the corner diagonally across from me and were celebrating a goal with less than a minute gone.
A VAR intervention brought the Hungarian joy to an abrupt halt and instead caused the sort of reaction around me that an Olympiacos goal would have done.
Ferencvaros had ex-Boro loanee Mo Besic on the bench and he remained there until there were just ten minutes to go. It wasn’t an inspired substitution as within sixty seconds of him coming on the home side went in front.
There were no more goals and the Olympiacos win meant that I was able to successfully leg it for the first available train at full-time whilst everyone around me celebrated the win.
Trail of the Lion King 