FIFA cheats on VISA with FNB

Today I have decided that the worst part of the world cup next year is the ticket scheme. Why did it piss me off? First off it seemed as though I was applying for a job, filling out an online form with all my details with the knowledge that my application may not be accepted, seriously is FIFA going the BEE route and trying to get equal distributions of races into the games. Never have I ever heard of filling out forms in order to get tickets to the sport games until the FIFA world cup.

But that wasn’t the worst part. What hacked me off totally was that after filling out all of FIFA’s krap it followed with a page called ‘payment’. Now I was expecting to be asked for payment details after my application was perhaps accepted, or maybe even asked my credit card details, fair enough its how it is done in the modern era but that didn’t happen either. Instead the website obviously assumed that I had either a VISA card or mastercard and obviously being South African that was very unlikely. So after filling out all the forms it came down to clicking on the x you see on the top right of your screen and meant the forms I filled out came to nothing but frustration to myself. What made it worse was the stupid sign at the bottom of the page that said ‘FIFA prefers VISA’. I coudnt give two tosses for VISA’s sponsorship of the world cup and really they should have thought about expanding themselves in South Africa before sponsoring an event in the country

So after all of that I am going to go down to FNB tomorrow to get the form to fill out which is the alternative method to apply for tickets but it will probably ask me for my FNB account details, of course another bank branch I do not belong to and what will frustrate me further is a sign at the bottom which will probably say ‘FIFA prefers FNB’. Should a simple game like football be a run by a bunch of twits like FIFA who ruin the other parts of the game making them complex. The ticket scheme is so confusing and could be done so much better and perhaps in the way that other tickets are sold. South Africa is hosting the damn tournament so surely we should have at least one ticket outlet in each province hosting games where we can pay for our tickets with real currency. I’m sure everybody would agree that it is unfair for those being VISA, Mastercard or FNB customers to have a chance to get tickets easily, while those that bank with others such as standard bank like myself lose out totally while wasting our own time in the process. FIFA are way too biased towards their sponsors to a point where they don’t even want people attending the world cup that endorse competitor’s products. Is that really the nature of the game of football? Tell me Sepp, is football still the winner in the end?

Another thing is that with tickets being sold predominantly on the net, how on earth are those in rural townships supposed to be able to get their chance to attend the games. These are the people that you would imagine FIFA would be most adamant of receiving tickets seeing as FIFA wants to take the game to the poorer of people. So there you go, FIFA the dumbest thing that ever happened to football.

Cheers till the next rant,
Justin