World Cup fever is gripping Uzbekistan, where tempers flared this week as some 1,500 football aficionados queued for tickets for an upcoming group game match at Tashkent’s Bunyodkor Stadium. The BBC's Uzbek Service reported that police used force to disperse the disorderly crowd.
The excitement is understandable: A first for Central Asian football, Uzbekistan's national team stands on the verge of qualifying for the game’s top contest, to be held in Brazil next year.
The Uzbekistan Football Federation website reported the supporters flooded Bunyodkor's ticket offices on March 18, expecting tickets to go on sale at 2 p.m. When ticket windows failed to open, disgruntled fans started revolting. The police moved in with batons and made several arrests, according to the kun.uz website.
The 12news.uz website claimed 6,000 tickets were sold later in the day, but a fan commenting on the story claimed that only 200-500 tickets had been sold after 18.30 and that enthusiasts were unhappy with the process.
Fans will now have to wait until after the Navruz holiday to get their hands on the precious tickets, which will go on sale again March 22. The tickets, which cost between 15,000 and 30,000 sum ($7.50 to $15.00 at the official exchange rate), are limited to two per person.
Tajikistan’s national football team went down 0-1 in a World Cup 2014 qualifier on September 2 to deadly rivals Uzbekistan. But Tajikistan Football Federation vice-president Rustam Emomali, President Emomali Rakhmon’s eldest son, is not taking the defeat lying down and has promised to improve the quality of the game in the country.
“Of course, it is shame that we were unable to defend the draw, but our team acquitted itself well against Uzbekistan,” he was cited as saying by Russian news agency Interfax.
Having played for Tajik premier league champions Istiqlol Dushanbe, Emomali should know a thing or two about football.
He also spared a few words for the national team’s enthusiastic fans, diplomatically ignoring the scenes of unrest outside the packed 13,600-capacity stadium in Tursunzade. A meeting in the Tajik capital between the presidents of Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Russia meant the game was pushed off the national airwaves, so turning up in person was the only way of getting to see the game live.
Again, presumably due to security concerns related to this meeting, the game was not held at the larger national stadium in Dushanbe, so many hopeful fans were turned away, leading to ugly scenes with the large contingent of police present.
Emomali may be reluctant to remind people about football violence, since he is ostensibly the cause of several worrying incidents at the country’s stadiums this year. Indeed, many a Tajik football fan is all but certain that team he himself founded, Istiqlol, benefits unduly from generous refereeing.
