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Rabat – While the Moroccan Football Federation (FRMF) vowed to offer Moroccan fans more than 8,000 seats for the Morocco-Ivory Coast game, only 400 tickets have actually been made available to the Moroccan team’s supporters, reported African News Agency (APA).
Only five days separate the Moroccan football team from the World Cup qualifier game against Ivory Coast, which will decide who is going to play in Russia’s 2018 World Cup, and approximately 29,000 entry tickets to Abidjan’s Houphouet-Boigny Stadium have been issued for the game.
According to APA, 2,000 out of 29,000 tickets are reserved for officials, while 27,000 are designed for supporters. The sale of tickets was launched on Monday morning, Eric Kacou, Head of Communication Bureau of the Ivorian Football Federation (IFF), told APA.
The Houphouet-Boigny Stadium has a 33,000 seating capacity. However, the Ivorian federation granted only 400 places to the Moroccan federation, which had requested over 8,000 seats for its fans in late October.
Kacou justified the low number of Moroccan-designated tickets to the APA.
“The IFF did more than the Moroccan federation, which in the first leg, gave us only 200 places. But, we have doubled the number,” said Kacou.
Kacou was repeating a complaint made in October by the president of local football fan group Comité National de Soutien aux Élephants (CNSE), who stated that the Ivorian federation would “never accept” the FRMF’s ticket request.
“We’re hearing here and there that Moroccans are going to invade Ivory Coast,” said President Parfait Kouassi. “We’d like to tell them that there aren’t enough seats in Félix Houphouët-Boigny Stadium. We won’t let them take our seats.”
“During the first leg, the Moroccans gave us only 200 seats in a stadium with 60,000 seats capacity. In Abidjan, to pay them back what they did to us, Moroccan fans will only get 201 seats,” he said.
The Atlas Lions are only one point away from booking a ticket to the World Cup for the first time in 20 years.
On November 4, state-owned Royal Air Maroc (RAM) started selling flight tickets to Abidjan. The tickets will be sold at MAD 2,000 for a round trip flight. The Moroccan airline announced it would deploy additional flights in order to accommodate fans wishing to travel to Abidjan and cheer for their team.
