The Reds sorry for leaving fans high ‘n’ dry

Article posted by Coliseum, August 11^th, 2021

Image: MJR Group Ltd./Coliseum

The Premier League club Liverpool F.C. (UK) have released a statement apologising to supporters who were impacted in gaining entry to their residence Anfield for the August 8^th game with the Spain club Athletic Bilbao.

The ‘Liverpool Echo’ stated that the match was due to start at 4 pm but due to teething problems with the club’s new ticketing system, kick-off was delayed by 30 minutes.

The Liverpool Football Club is a professional football club in Liverpool, England (UK), which competes in the Premier League, the top tier of English football. Domestically, the club has won 19 League titles, seven Football Association (FA) Cups, a record eight League Cups, and 15 FA Community Shields. In international competitions, the club has won six European Cups, more than any other English club, three Union of European Football Association (UEFA) Cups, four UEFA Super Cups (also English records), and one FIFA Club World Cup™.

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Anfield is a football stadium in Anfield, Liverpool, Merseyside, England (UK), which has a seating capacity of 53,394, making it the seventh largest football stadium in England. It has been the home of Liverpool F.C. since their formation in 1892.

The Athletic Bilbao is a professional football club based in the City of Bilbao in the Basque Country in Spain.

Videos and images posted on social media showed significant queues outside Anfield leading up to 4 pm, with plenty of empty seats inside the ground.

The ‘Liverpool Echo’ further stated that Liverpool have introduced Near-Field Communication for stadium access this campaign, with an electronic pass downloaded into a digital wallet on a mobile phone which is scanned for entry.

Near-Field Communication is a set of communication protocols for communication between two electronic devices over a distance of four cm or less. NFC offers a low-speed connection with a simple setup that can be used to bootstrap more-capable wireless connections.

And the club have now confirmed the reasons behind why supporters were forced to suffer delayed access to the ground and apologised for the inconvenience caused.

A statement from Liverpool read, “We apologise wholeheartedly to all fans impacted by the delayed entry into Anfield on August 8^th. This was due to issues relating to access processes and matchday operations. As a result of these challenges, kick-off was delayed by 30 minutes in order to allow our ticketing services team to reduce the queues and get supporters inside the stadium as quickly and safely as possible. We understand how frustrating this has been for our supporters, who have been looking forward to getting back into Anfield.”

The statement added, “We will be doing a full debrief of today’s (read August 8^th) entry process to identify why the system was slower than expected and will endeavor to ensure such issues are addressed. We thank supporters for their patience and understanding.”

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