‘I went to AFCON on a whim – it was complicated chaos and had a snake charmer so I liked it’
The African Cup of Nations is full of sights and sounds but how easy is to get to the biggest show on the largest continent? We sent our action man to find out
Andy Gilpin enjoys the African Cup of Nations in the sun (Image: Andy Gilpin)
There’s nothing more exotic and intoxicating than the African Cup of Nations. Euros? Forget about it, it’s more interesting than Slovenia versus Denmark in Stuttgart (1-1 if anyone cares).
With that in mind the Daily Star’s intrepid roving football fan decided to hop on a plane and see if he could get into the greatest show on the biggest continent. But what’s it like, how do you get a ticket and does it involve nail biting and snake charmers? Well, yes to all of that.
DISCLAIMER: This is not designed to take the mick and say ‘Europeans or North Americans do sport best’. Africa does it differently, and that’s what makes all this exotic, intoxicating and well worth experiencing…
Getting the tickets – round one
Well this is a faff wrapped in a conundrum hidden in a corn maze. Don’t think you buy some paper tickets off a fella minutes before the match. Everything is electronic. Firstly you must download the Yalla app and get your own specific fan ID. This involved filling in forms and rubbing your passport on the back of your phone until the app reads the chip. Even then it’s not instantaneous.
Someone then has to manually go through your application and approve it. Ours took 12 hours to be processed. You cannot get an AFCON ticket without this fan ID, but when you get one you can then visit the official AFCON site to look at tickets. Well, sort of.
I wanted the quarter final in Marrakech on January 9. I looked a week before and tickets were available for 200 Moroccan Dinhams (around £17) for Category 3 – these are behind the goals – then 400MAD for cat 2 (the corners) and 600MAD for cat 3 (side on to the pitch). However, it wouldn’t let me buy them without a fan ID. Even without that I clicked on the tickets but it said ‘other people are currently buying the tickets you have selected, please try again later’.
I later found out what this meant. In the time I was waiting Algeria and Nigeria qualified. As Algeria is next to Morocco there was always going to huge anticipation, plus Nigeria are one of the most popular teams in Africa, if not the world. This meant that demand for this was high.
Every time I went on the site it simply said ‘tickets unavailable’. Not ‘sold out’ just ‘unavailable’. I tried with other games and got them, so I knew this was going to be tougher than I thought. Especially when it loudly announced ‘tickets sold out’ a few days later.
Getting the tickets – round two
I was directed to a site called Ticombo which had been recommended by someone who had done a few group games. The tickets for the match I wanted started at £180 for a pair in category 3. Have it in mind they are £18 cost price. I spoke to a Moroccan tour guide who claimed that large swathes of tickets are bought by touts who then sell them on at inflated prices. This seemed to check out as a lot of the tickets I wanted on Ticombo were owned by the same people.
One fella had loads to sell in one block and lots more in different ones. I was going to have to play the waiting game. Touts will get people desperate to lock into the game and willing to pay premium prices straight up.
However they also don’t want to be caught with tickets and slowly the prices came down. I decided to wait it out as I didn’t want to pay any more than £75 each.
The day before the game they were coming in at £100. On the day of the game, cat 3 were £60. If I’d have waited longer I’m sure they would have come down even more. But there are more hoops to jump through on this site, so I chose x2 cat tickets for £74 each. Once that went through I got a message from the seller, Mohammed, in the app asking for my fan ID for the transfer.
I sent it, and nothing. He then messaged a few hours later (this was just before the match and I was starting get twitchy) and asked for my number. When I saved him to WhatsApp it came up as a ‘business’ number. Mohammed had done this before.
Over texts, with OTP codes he finally transferred the tickets. You’d need to be online to do this and I was lucky as I was a cafe with good WiFi. Even then I had to download yet another app, the AFCON official tickets app to accept the tickets with more passcodes and emailed codes. Finally though, I had a way in.
In the end Mohammed and I became pals. He even wished me a safe flight home a few days later. Although he had text me to see if I wanted any tickets for the semi finals – because of course he had loads.
Oh what an atmosphere
I’d had a taster of AFCON the night before in the main square when Morocco played Cameroon on a big screen. Despite being one of the busiest and most bustling places in Africa, large parts were shut so the fanatical fans could watch the national side beat the Indomitable Lions 2-0. I was more concerned with watching Wrexham vs Nottingham Forest on my laptop, but it gave me a taster and I was excited.
The next day in the square swarms of Algerian fans from all over the world descended, all wearing flags, singing and dancing, with one so engrossed in a chant he nearly walked into a snake charmer.
For my part it started even more badly than a King Cobra bite. I thought the kick off was 6pm local time. But at 4.05pm I learned it was actually 5pm (I wondered why the Algerian fans were nowhere to be seen), and Marrakesh is not the right place to be if you need to get somewhere in a hurry.
We eventually battled through the narrow streets to a taxi rank where everyone was bartering to get to the game. One guy wanted 350MAD (around £30) for the 11km trip but eventually we got it down to 200MAD and got in a taxi with two French guys supporting Nigeria.
Our driver took us the long way, through endless wasteland and I wondered who the hell built a ground here, until he hung a left and brought us in to the Grand Stade de Marrakech. The game had kicked off and there were already loud gasps from the crowd inside, but finally we were here.
Are we there yet?
What I wasn’t prepared for was the sheer amount of time it took to get into the match, even though we were looking at the stadium. Zig zag barriers after zig zag barriers, endless ticket inspections (I counted at least six different people who checked my ticket), searches and pat downs.
We had a bottle of water confiscated, which I thought was a little crazy considering it was the hottest part of the day. We finally battled into Gate 5 with the match 15 minutes old and the score still 0-0.
Finding our actual seats was no mean task though. The numbers didn’t seem to correspond with the sections and the stewards all gave us conflicting advice on where we might actually be seated. After a few minutes going up and down stairs and sidling across gantries, we finally found our section, but there were no letters on the rows so we sort of just had to guess.
We were in with predominantly Algerian fans, and we were a LONG way from the pitch due to a large running track around the ground. The pitch almost looked like an ice hockey rink somewhere in the distance.
Let’s be honest, these weren’t great seats (thanks Mohamed), especially with the sun directly in our eyes for most of the match. But the game was buzzing, the crowd was up for it and like a Labrador with its head out of the window in the car I was just happy to be there.
Come on, feel the noise
As a match experience, it’s not one I’m going to forget in a while. The crowd make-up was Algerian with a fair few Moroccans and a sprinkling of Nigerians and plucky tourists like myself. Match wise, Nigeria bossed it, much to the chagrin of my new Algerian friends, especially a tall man a few to my right who was getting increasingly annoyed – to the degree that he then got into a huge argument with some his fellow countrymen a few rows back.
At half time I tried to go for a drink – well, we had no water – but the queue for the single kiosk was like a scene from War of the Worlds, around 20 deep with people joining from all angles at all times.
Lucky I didn’t need the toilet as during all my travels I didn’t see one. Dance Cam was fun though – some people got into it more than others and I was desperate they’d come to me so I could give them something different – a patented under the knees clap. As Nigeria raced into a 2-0 lead without really breaking a sweat, the Algerians were getting more irate and I decided we’d best make a move.
Getting out amid a slanging match
We left around the 85-minute mark with a stream of Algerians who knew which way this game was headed (NOTE: This was because we wanted to beat the crowds in foreign climes – at no point did we feel unsafe in any way).
After doing the rat run again outside, we were all greeted by jeering Moroccans who wanted to point out just how terrible the Fennec Foxes were. It’s good that insulting your neighbouring country is a universal wind up.
We raced out of the perimeter and finally managed to see a queue of taxis. Due to distance from the centre of town to the stadium you knew every driver in the city would flock to this place!
After a minute we agreed a price of 200MAD with a fella who negotiated the now flocking crowds and Moroccans hanging out of cars taking the mickey. He took us a different way home and I saw the stadium was an extension of the city, but there was still time for him to nearly hit a moped rider with a rotund German fan riding pillion, draped in a Nigerian flag shouting something indecipherable. It summed up the day.
It was chaos, confusing, nuts in places. I loved every single minute of it.
