Brinksmanship Requirements Amid Jousts With The Touts

Got yourself a few spare days? Counting off the hours until Argentina v England and wondering, just wondering, how you could obtain a ticket? David Instone reflects on his initially ticketless experience as a paying fan at the tournament three and a half decades ago.

‘Signor, you’re a rip-off merchant’ read the large-type Express & Star headline on the only story I filed from the 1990 World Cup.2

My three-night visit to Italy took me nowhere near Sardinia, the England squad, Steve Bull or any stadium at which I was expected to phone back a match report.

But the editor and his news team were more than keen to snaffle the story that I had offered the sports desk about the unusual way I had purchased my tickets for three games in three cities across a span of 48 hours.

Two or three years after this trip, I became the first British journalist to visit and spend quality time with Sir Jack Hayward at his Bahamas home, workplace and leisure pursuits.

My delight and satisfaction at securing such a ‘scoop’ were somewhat punctured following my return to Queen Street, though, when the features department powers-that-be offered me a much smaller space on the page than was merited and required for such precious subject matter.

The Italian job, if I can call it that, was different. It must have been a slower news week and I was allowed ample room in which to properly tell my story.

Wolves Heroes disclosed early in the current tournament that Tom Bennett and various family members had paid £450 for each of the eight tickets they purchased for the Scotland v Haiti game in Boston.

Around the same time, we asked Matt Jarvis what he had shelled out for his seat at the France v Senegal Group I game in New York. The emoji he sent back (a face covered by hands) suggested it was not cheap and he would rather not say!

Tom was still a relative newcomer to Graham Turner’s first team at Wolves and Matt had not long started primary school when a hastily-planned trip to Italia 90 presented me with an unexpected problem – no tickets remained on general sale by the time we landed in the host country.

So much so that three of us, including Wolves programme editor Phil Walder, arrived in Milan three hours before kick-off of West Germany’s opening clash against the United Arab Emirates to find ourselves bartering with ticket touts. Other than settling down to watch a TV in a bar, there was no other way.

A sharp intake of breath accompanied the disclosure of the asking price and we retreated to watch developments from a distance. “A shady world of pavement negotiation” is how I described it in print. “Of furious arm-waving and, usually, of tentative handing-over of a pocketful of lire.”

At the following day’s Brazil v Costa Rica game in Turin, closure of a deal at something like face value was near until I was gazzumped by another tout. He already had a wad of tickets for different sections of the ground and here he was, 45 minutes before kick-off, buying more.

Brinkmanship, we discovered, was the name of the game. Tickets that cost one price an hour before kick-off could go for a fraction of it 45 minutes later. And a crash course in learning to count in Italian didn’t go amiss.

In Turin, we were able to beat our targeted man down from 140,000 lire for two tickets to 110,000, albeit for seats in different sections. Mine was actually on the very back row behind the goal opposite the one in which Brazil scored in a disappointing 1-0 win.

But my lofty vantage point had me sitting next to 26-year-old New Zealander Phil Jasinki, who had set off on a world tour five and a half months earlier with £2,000, a small rucksack of clothes and a mosquito net.

He had bedded down one night in the ticket hall of Milan Railway Station but said: “I stayed in India for quite a while and lived on £4 a day, including accommodation. Suddenly, I’m having to find five or six times that much just for 90 minutes of entertainment. But if you want to attend one of the best festivals in the world, you’ve got to hand over the cash.”

The following night’s Belgium v Uruguay game in Verona was a chilled experience, mainly because a tout from London sold us three tickets together for £25 a time (thanks virtually £65 each at today’s prices).

It was our second stroke of luck on the trip. The first had been outside Milan’s fabulous San Sir Stadium when the weather changed dramatically ten minutes before kick-off while we were still ticketless.

“A huge roar greeted the arrival on the pitch of the West Germany and United Arab Emirates players,” I wrote. “It was now or never.

“Suddenly, huge gusts of wind blew sand around the outer stadium and large raindrops fell from a jet-black sky,” I added. “The tout I was monitoring, happy with his business and not wanting to get his takings wet, decided enough was enough. He cut his £50 asking price in half and I stretched out a hopeful hand from among a cluster of prospective buyers of varying nationalities.

“The deal was finalised in a second and I reached my seat as the national anthems started to fade into the warm evening air.” 

Are touts even necessary these days to leave fans feeling fleeced? FIFA are making a perfectly good job of that themselves.