”Don’t come near the FNB Stadium on Saturday afternoon if you haven’t got a ticket,” was the warning from Kaizer Chiefs head of security Thami Mayaluza when he announced on Friday that the eagerly awaited Premier Soccer League (PSL) derby against Orlando Pirates was a sell-out.
”We put 72 000 tickets on the market,” said Mayaluza, ”and 24 hours before the game they had all been snapped up.”
With extra seating in the corporate boxes, VIP and complimentary tickets, the FNB Stadium is expected to be more congested than a consignment of Portuguese sardines, with 80 000 squeezed into the ground in all.
In addition to a doubling-up of security at the stadium itself, ”a cordon of steel” will be installed on the outside perimeter of Soccer City, with spectators needing to go through three security checkpoints before entering the ground.
The game is a do-or-die affair for defending PSL champions Chiefs, who will trail Pirates by 13 points in the title race if they suffer a defeat after a bizarre sequence of six successive draws.
”This is one game in which we will definitely be the underdogs,” said Chiefs chairperson and MD Kaizer Motaung, ”but that does not worry us a bit. I played in many of these fiercely contested derbies myself and the uncanny aspect of the games was that the favourites were beaten more often than not.”
A good deal of the betting money, however, is on the game finishing all-square, with an epidemic of draws currently the vogue in the PSL. — Sapa