Blog

Stories have emerged from a number of England’s disabled supporters who, despite being among the most highly-capped followers of the Three Lions, have not been allocated World Cup Final tickets by Fifa. That’s presuming England make it all the way, of course. Touch wood.

The problem stems from the fact that there simply aren’t enough disabled spaces in some of South Africa’s stadiums.

While it’s been difficult finding out exactly how many disabled spaces will be available, it’s fair to say that by the expectations of disabled fans in this country, their just aren’t enough.

Our Fans’ Embassy team has been trying to get to the bottom of this, in order to update our City Guides, but so far it’s been difficult. Apparently at many stadiums the numbers won’t be known until contractors hand over to the council. Which sounds a little odd, surely these things are known in advance?!

We have managed to hunt down the figures for some of the stadiums and they make for interesting reading. The stadium in Polokwane holds 46,000 fans of which 1,000 are designated for disabled supporters, which seems pretty fair.

However Soccer City in Johannesburg, which will host the Final, has a total capacity of 94,900 but only 112 disabled spaces. This obviously isn’t adequate although it isn’t necessarily at the root of the problem.

Englandfans are given 8 per cent of the stadium’s capacity for the final, if you carry this figure pro-rata across to disabled spaces this should give England about nine spaces for the final, out of the 112 available.

It does seem that an oversight somewhere along the line, not by the FA but by Fifa, means that none were allocated to the nations involved.

Well done to the FA though, they’re one of the best when it comes to issues of disability, racism, or homophobia, and they’ve promised this is something they’ll be able to resolve with Fifa.

If you’re disabled and should have qualified for tickets but missed out let the FA know about it via Englandfans.

We know they’ve already helped one fan who would have otherwise missed out, so speak up!

By Michael Brunskill