As expected since the opening of the ticket office, the French team will have to make do with a very limited contingent of supporters in Qatar.
A few months before the World Cup in Qatar, concern is growing among many supporters. This is especially true within the LGTB+ community where the idea of a boycott is gaining ground. Consequence of recent comments by Abdullah Al Ansari, the head of security for the 2022 World Cup.
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“If you buy a ticket, it is to attend a football match and not to demonstrate. So don’t come and insult an entire society. We cannot change laws or religion for the 28 days of the World Cup”, he launched for LGTB + supporters. But the latter are not the only ones thinking about not making the trip to Qatar.
Accommodation is a problem
So if no less than 28,000 ticket requests have been made by tricolor supporters according to the French Football Federation, the contingent of French fans should remain limited. Firstly because France will have to settle for 2,300 places in the first round and between 3,000 and 5,000 places in the final phase. A limited contingent compared to the 6,000 places allocated to each nation in 2018.
But if the supporters are worried, it is also because of the prohibitive prices charged by the hosts, who are too few in number. Something to cool the most loyal of supporters. “For the first time since 2006, I’m going to miss the World Cup and it was heartbreaking because it’s a competition that we wait for every four years, thus confided Anne Costes, the vice-president of Irresistibles Français. There are very few cheap accommodations. We were 600 in Russia and we will be around fifty in Qatar. » The contingent of French supporters should therefore mainly be made up of expatriates present in the Gulf countries.