Sadio Mane has sent 300 Liverpool shirts to his home village in Senegal for fans to wear during Saturday’s Champions League final against Real Madrid.
The Liverpool forward — part of a fearsome front line alongside Mohamed Salah and Roberto Firmino — expects Bambali to grind to a halt as the 2,000 inhabitants all stop to watch him play in the European showpiece.
In 2005 a 13-year-old Mane found himself in a similar position as the village turned out to watch Liverpool’s famous 2005 Champions League final victory over AC Milan and the 26-year-old hopes to be able to return to Bambali, where his family still live, with a winner’s medal.
Real Madrid fan Marcos Sanchez secured accommodation well in advance but his bookings were cancelled and prices skyrocketed.
– ‘Nightmare’ –
“Everything has been a nightmare,” he said. “I have reported it on social networks and Ukrainian journalists have even called me because it gives a bad image for the city and the country.
“People have created a Facebook group offering their houses in Kiev for free and it works brilliantly, it´s genuine.”
Spanish fan groups have organised accommodation outside Ukraine as well as in Kiev and many fans are flying straight in and out.
Nabil Alturek, president of fan group Pena Capote Y Montera, said two groups were travelling. One will sleep in Warsaw one night and Kiev the next before returning to Warsaw and the other will spend the night at the airport in the Ukraine capital.
“It was cheap because we booked a long time ago,” he said. “We were shocked by the cancellations, but we were lucky, we paid 40 or 50 euros per person” at the hotel in Kiev”.
But Kiev mayor Vitali Klitschko, the former world heavyweight boxing champion, gave a robust response about situation in the city, saying reports of tickets being returned was “fake news”.
“There are no hotel rooms left for the Champions League,” he said.
“The fact that prices are going up before a major event, this happens in other places besides Kiev,” he added. “This is world practice. The city cannot regulate business — these are the laws of the market.”
Liverpool’s Moore has hailed the collective efforts of Liverpool supporters and staff and said club officials were working hard to stamp down on tickets being sold by touts.
“We are acutely aware of the issues that our supporters have faced in terms of obtaining tickets, arranging travel, and organising accommodation for the final,” he wrote on Liverpool’s website.
“The entire 16,626 allocation that Liverpool received from UEFA for the final has now been sold and the club is aware of instances of tickets being sold at extortionate prices, with a number of cases currently being investigated,” he said.
British police have warned fans without tickets not to travel to Ukraine and have advised against buying tickets from touts.
Source:AFP
