🏆 I learn about the FIFA Club World Cup final last-minute and don't have a ticket... but I manage to attend it! Throwback 🔙
Chelsea just won its first world title, against Palmeiras, congrats to The Blues
Their first appearance in the tournament was in 2012, in Japan, against Corinthians, also a Brazilian team
Throwback:
Late October 2012, I move to Japan, as part of my "Around the World in 80 MONTHS" project
December 16, I am in my Tokyo flat, randomly surfing the web, when I bump into an article talking about the Club WC final and discover it's happening in the nearby city of Yokohama... I realize the game is starting in 1h45 only, I don't have a ticket, and I need a good hour to get there... So, of course I tell myself it's too late, right? Wrong, that wouldn't be me at all! I decide to give it my best to have no regret at least, and maybe, just maybe, I'll get lucky...
I get ready quickly, rush to the stadium... when I arrive in front, there is almost no one outside anymore, as the game is starting already... but I get super lucky, not only to find someone with an extra ticket, but even to be gifted it!
I enter the stadium just 5 minutes late. I'm not really for a team specifically, but Brazilians being really crazy about football, many have made the trip, and also since there's a big Japanese diaspora in São Paulo, where Corinthians is from, most of the locals also are for that team... so, I decide to watch the game with their fans, the hardcore ones / ultras, actually. Great choice, with fans cheerful all game long, and Corinthians ultimately winning the game
What an experience it was, so glad I tried and made it! 🥳
🙏 Once again, thanks a lot, arigato gozaimasu, to that lovely couple who ! 🙇
💡 No time, no ticket... no problem, go for it anyway... it may not work the way you wished, but at least you'll have tried everything; and if it does work, and most likely it actually will if you give it your best, you will appreciate even more the outcome, and even the whole adventure! 🤙
❓ Have YOU already traveled ticketless to a stadium to attend a sold-out game? If so, how did it result? Have YOU already attended a club world cup? 💬

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As I used to take pictures of kind of everything in my daily life, I have a pic of part of The Guardian article I bumped into at that time and that motivated me to go to the game... and so I tried to look it up now, 10 years later, and actually I could find it! So, here's part of it, such a crazy fan story, I had to share it:
«Corinthians (...) won this trophy in its former guise back in 2000 but won their first Copa Libertadores this year to earn this opportunity in Japan. They will be cheered on by around 25,000 fans at the Yokohama International stadium, vastly outnumbering Chelsea's own support, many of them having taken extreme measures to make the journey to the Far East.
"Corinthians is a club like no other in the world," said Edu. "The fans are poor people, yet they sell cars to come here, they borrow money from the bank to come here, they lose jobs to take [redundancy benefit] money from the government to come here. I saw one guy outside our stadium who stopped my car and asked me for money. He wanted to borrow five or 10 real. I asked him why and he said: 'I am borrowing money to go to Japan.' He had written down on a piece of paper exactly what everyone had given him so he could pay them back, so he wrote: 'From Edu I borrowed 10 real.' He had a pile of notes 3cm high.
"I gave him some money. There was another guy who injured his legs in a motorbike accident and couldn't walk. He came by wheelchair but he had to come alone because there was no one to help him push the chair. He called the club president and asked for help, so we have helped him come over. Other fans don't have the money to stay in hotels so they've called up the Corinthians fans here in Japan and are staying in their houses for no charge. They are sleeping on the floor like sardines. We have to give something to these fans by winning this trophy."»

How could I not feel like I had to go to try and see the game after reading that, huh?

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