The ticket-selling style of a footballing nation in decline.

(Baonghean.vn) - On December 3rd, the day the Vietnam Football Federation (VFF) officially began distributing tickets for the second leg of the 2016 AFF Cup semi-final between Vietnam and Indonesia, the iron gate of the organization's headquarters was also knocked down. But faith in the ticket sales process had long since collapsed.

According to the plan announced by the Vietnam Football Federation (VFF), starting at 9:00 AM on December 3rd, the VFF will accept ticket purchases via official correspondence from agencies, organizations, and associations. Direct ticket sales at My Dinh Stadium will begin at 7:00 AM, through five ticket booths surrounding the stadium.

But in reality, long before that, starting at 7 PM on December 2nd in the cold Hanoi weather, hundreds of people had brought blankets and mats to queue up, and the crowd grew larger as the night progressed. Many of them were from Hung Yen, Bac Ninh, and even Nghe An, jostling to buy tickets.

The gate of the VFF headquarters was knocked down on December 3rd.

To restore order to the crowd, which sometimes numbered several thousand people, the riot police had to use batons. At the VFF headquarters on Le Quang Dao Street (My Dinh), a line of people also appeared from 5 am, waiting to buy tickets via official channels.

After the railway system reorganized its online ticket sales system, the Vietnam Football Federation (VFF) is the only one in Vietnam still selling tickets manually. Vietnam currently has tens of millions of internet subscribers, not to mention 138 million mobile subscribers, of which about 22% use smartphones and are fully capable of connecting to the internet to buy tickets online. In fact, the VFF did once organize a website for ticket sales, but for some reason, the Federation has now reverted to the traditional queuing method, despite widespread public outrage.

Thanh Tam, an employee at Nhan Dan newspaper, said: "For the whole last week, I called the Federation's leaders to buy tickets, but the line was always busy. Finally, luckily, thanks to a colleague from a sports newspaper, I managed to get 4 tickets."

Mr. Hoan "Pháo" - Chairman of the Hai Phong Football Supporters' Association, who had just returned from supporting the national team in Indonesia, angrily stated: "We applied to buy 300 tickets for our members, but the Federation said they were all gone and only allocated 6 tickets, so we didn't take them. I went to the black market and they said they had plenty, you could buy as many as you wanted, even hundreds of tickets in a row, which made us very upset. These must be tickets smuggled out by the Federation to have hundreds of tickets in a row, not to mention that football tickets in Vietnam are very expensive, 100 times more expensive than in Indonesia."

Tran Song Hai, Vice President of the Vietnam Supporters' Association, bitterly remarked: "I myself had to buy tickets on the black market to invite friends to watch the second leg of the semi-final... This is clearly an act of profiteering, treating fans like dirt. Don't say 'the VFF always respects the fans' anymore!"

Many tickets for the second leg of the AFF Cup semi-final match between Vietnam and Indonesia have been leaked onto the black market.

After buying his ticket, Tran Tuan Hung, a fan from Bac Giang, told us angrily: “I lined up from 5 am. Many people are frustrated with the VFF's ticket sales methods. The number of people queuing to buy tickets was around 5-6 thousand, while the VFF only provided two ticket counters at either end of the stadium, each with two tables. Just imagine how many tickets they could sell in the morning. I was lucky to be standing right at the entrance, only 2 meters away, but it still took me two hours to buy one.”

It's not just Mr. Hung, but tens of thousands of people, whether they managed to buy tickets or not, are very upset with the arbitrary and incomprehensible actions of the VFF. People believe that VFF officials are "tending to endure the blows just to get the benefits"...

Those who bought tickets through official channels were no luckier; they also had to wait in line, faced scrutiny, and the approval process followed no criteria or rules. People only looked at the "size" of the seal or the level of connection with "close partners," not at demand or the order of queuing. How many tickets from this channel ended up on the black market is something only the VFF (Vietnam Football Federation) knows.

With My Dinh Stadium's maximum capacity of only 40,000 seats, and fans demanding three or four times that number, it's easy to get a ticket. But what's causing widespread outrage is whether it's necessary to spend so much time and effort to obtain a ticket. Why are tickets being openly offered on the black market at exorbitant prices, often in long rows?

In countries with professional football, tickets are distributed online, through SMS registration, call centers, and at various locations throughout the city. A friend of mine who works at the British embassy said: For Manchester derby matches, even at Old Trafford with its 86,000 seats, the organizers only sell tickets for 3-4 hours, very smoothly and politely, so the audience, including those who couldn't get tickets, are satisfied.

As this article goes to print, black market tickets are being sold for 3 million VND per pair for tickets that originally cost 400,000 VND. This isn't a measure of the passion of Vietnamese fans, but rather an answer to the question: Why hasn't Vietnamese football developed?

An Thanh