The CONCACAF 2018 World Cup Qualifying Hexagonal Schedule is out and it’s ready to go. The fans are excited, the players are excited, and the football is ready to play. But wait! One thing we forgot to mention is the entry crisis to come into these matches! If we have to wait hours to get into these games, better we open the gates for everyone.
Imagine you are a die-hard fan. You leave work at an appropriate time to go support our Soca Warriors, and you meet traffic on Wrightson Road. The traffic is one thing, but when you already have a struggle to get from point A to B on the road and thereafter, you meet a next long line, this time, of people, with everybody pushing, it’s a massive headache. Imagine there are persons with kids and still have to fight to get in with tickets in hand. The qualifier between Soca Warriors and Guatemala on September 2nd, 2016 was like a carnival band crossing the stage; the only difference was that this stage was shorter without any music and it still took longer. So imagine the torture. In these large crowds, fans are just entertaining one another just to keep their sanity.
These are big international games and this is the madness we have to go through to support our boys in the Red, White and Black. The foreign supporters are not accustomed to this. So why are we doing this to our own people? Is it that the people at the top who are responsible for running these matches don’t care about their supporters? It sure seems like this is the case, seeing that the heads are comfortably seated inside in VIP watching the match, while the avid fans are stuck outside and the first half of the match has almost concluded. Sometimes, unfortunately for us outside, we end up missing some beautiful scored goals. To add to the pain, standing 40 minutes in a line to get proper clearance from security is one thing. But imagine reaching the gate and no one searches you or checks your ticket! It seems that we have endured this agony in vain.
Now you get pass the first entrance and just when you think it’s free sailing to finally enter the stadium, it’s a different story. Fans are bottlenecked trying to get up the thin flight of stairs and can barely make it in. Imagine, just over 90 minutes for a match, but 40 minutes you are stuck outside the stadium in the hustle and bustle to go support the Soca Warriors on the Road to Russia 2018. The question lies, what are the authorities going to do to fix this? Let’s wait to find out on November 11, 2016 when we take on Costa Rica.
