THE BUILD UP to this World Cup has been dominated by so many questions about the exorbitant price of pretty much everything associated with the tournament.
Fifa even had to perform a U-turn on wanting to extract as much money by banning fans from bringing their own reusable water bottles into stadiums.
Sure what’s another few dollars spent on Fifa-approved hydration when the cost of a ticket to get into the ground in the first place is in the thousands?
The questions have been loud and continuous.
Why are ticket prices so high?
How can Fifa justify running its own re-sale market, let along taking an additional 15% from both the buyer and seller?
Did fans have the wool pulled over their eyes when selecting seats with dubious seating plans?
Will stadiums be half empty?
How much debt will supporters end up in just to see their team?
Will the Greed Is Good World Cup solely be for the wealthy?
What if there were like-minded people from around the world who didn’t care about profit or act purely in self-interest, but off a noble premise of community instead?
What if there was even a way to look out for people you had never met purely on the basis of trust and friendship?
What if there was a group of fans who had travelled the world – some beginning their journey around the globe 50 years ago – and slowly established a sprawling network that allows those in the inner circle to continue their explorations of football’s great cathedrals?
That is what The 42 found, a cooperative where shared values and commitment are rewarded. Where tickets are traded, bank details are even shared, travel is coordinated, and accommodation throughout the world is offered to those among the group.
It is estimated to have between 60 and 70 members, covering almost every corner of the world, from Ireland to India, with some individuals who are extremely wealthy and others who save every cent to attend football when they can.
This week, almost all of them will descend on North America, taking in 104 matches of 48 teams across three countries – Canada, Mexico and the United States.
It is a group without a name, but has members in Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, not to mention throughout Europe and those from the three host nations.
We have christened them ‘The World Cup Freemasons’.
….
Steve ‘Fish’ Fisher has lived a life. The old cliché of measuring it in World Cups rings true because that is always his reference point.
He was a relative late starter when he attended Mexico 86 just after turning 30. He will celebrate his 70th birthday next May and this edition of the tournament will be his 10th.
It could have been his 11th, but life had other plans. Italia 90 came just after he was married and before the birth of his first child. His printing and photography company was also taking off, a business that has allowed him to continue this passion of a lifetime into retirement.
Fish (in the Union Jack t-shirt) with some Argentina fans outside the Azteca Stadium before the famous Hand of God goal at Mexico 86.
He is a Mancunian, but Fish speaks to The 42 from his gorgeous home overlooking the water near Nanaimo on Vancouver Island.
He is a long way from the 192 bus he’d take in the wind and rain from Manchester to Stockport in the early days of that apprenticeship in printing and photography. It was the 1970s and the three-day week imposed by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government made things feel even more bleak.
Manchester United was Fish’s relief and release. From ’72 to ’79 he went home away with the Red Army. “You always find a way,” he says.
It’s a mantra he has taken with him throughout life, one he always sought to extract the most from. He’s slept in cars, train station floors and under the stars.
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But Canada has been his home from the moment he decided to follow his parents to Vancouver Island in his early 20s.
The 1980s were barren for Fish in more ways than one. Not only were Liverpool dominant, but getting to watch United games in Canada was nigh on impossible. Newspapers and magazines would arrive four weeks out of date. There were games from Germany televised every week, but not England.
He’d find what he could on radio, but that was slim pickings. The establishment of the Premier League changed the game, and for Fish it allowed him to continue his entrepreneurial streak.
“My house was nicknamed NASA because of all the satellites I had on the deck,” he says.
Still, games would be infrequent. Once or twice a month he might get United. A chance meeting with people from Setanta Sports took things to a new level. The Celtic and Rangers fans nearby were all better organised and already buying games directly to show.
Fish got in touch with Setanta to make his case. “I bought a huge C-band dish from them and turned it into a sideline job.”
He would tape United games at home and drive 25 minutes into Victoria where he struck a deal with a local pub to show them. Word spread, and not just among his fellow Reds. “There would be 30 to 40 Scousers too so I’d alternate,” Fish says. “A tenner a head to cover the expenses.”
It lasted almost 15 years, serving some of the English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Italian, Portuguese and Croatian immigrants. “It was a really good community of people, I had hundreds and hundreds of people on an email list and by the end I would do out emails each week letting them know what games would be shown.”
The 1986 World Cup in Mexico fuelled Fish’s spirit of adventure even further.
It was perfect. Along with friends who would fill the pub in Victoria, they headed south for the start of the tournament.
Fish in Los Angeles in 1994.
Some of the details from the first few days are hazy. “Lots of tequila and dancing on the beach,” Fish says. An overnight bus to Guadalajara left a mark. “Stopping at places you didn’t want to visit.”
The destination made it worthwhile as Fish, along with close friend Tommy Jones, “an Evertonian”, made it for the quarter-final between France and Brazil. When the game went to penalties they watched from the nearest step to the exits in preparation for a mad dash to the airport to catch a flight to Mexico City.
“Platini and Socrates both missed, so I’ll never be hard on any player who misses a penalty,” Fish says.
Just as well seeing as he’s an England fan.
They were playing Argentina the next day in one of the other quarter-finals. A two-hour delay in the airport had everyone on edge, but the man sitting next to Fish was fuming more than most.
Ron Atkinson wasn’t happy at all. I think he was supposed to be in business class but he was bumped out and they put him in with all of us instead. The flight was chocker, and there is the manager of Manchester United sitting right across the aisle from me and I am wanting to talk about United. I left him alone after a while.”
Fish headed straight to the Azteca on the morning of the game. “We had to get tickets, didn’t we, and we were able to buy them for cash at the ticket office at the stadium.”
What followed was football history. Maradona’s Hand of God and then his Goal of the Century. “Both just happened in a flash. For the Hand of God you couldn’t tell. We were central enough near the middle of the pitch but I couldn’t tell if it was handball.
“A lot of people around me were unhappy, it was definitely moody after the game, but no one knew for sure. It’s not like you saw replays or were getting messages or could check online.”
The experiences of the first 30 years of Fish’s life, with Mexico 86 as a kind of totem pole to adventure, helped to shape the 40 years that followed and the values of the World Cup Freemasons.
“There are a lot of things that are shit in modern football,” Fish says. “With the group, we look out for each other, I suppose there is a comfort knowing you won’t be ripped off.
“There is a massive amount of local knowledge from people in the group throughout the world. We travel to games and are like-minded people trading tickets, giving each other help and advice. If I need a bed somewhere in Holland for a game, I know there is someone I can go to.
“If I need to know the score about a game in Slovakia or Prague, there will be people I can go to.”
The Hand of God. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
An example; three members of the group based on different continents will stay with Fish at the start of their World Cup journey on Monday. He has arranged their 90-minute ferry to the mainland where Turkey play Australia, and from there will drive them three hours on to Seattle for Belgium against Egypt.
They will go their separate ways from there, and for Fish he has been able to source tickets for his wife and kids for Canada games, and reckons his average cost per ticket is around $500 (€430).
“We knew they would take the piss with prices but even from planning two years out we didn’t think it would be this extreme,” he says. “I bought my ticket for the final in 1994 on the day of the game, I don’t think that will happen now.”
Trust is the core principle, there are no formal requirements for entry, although a four-tournament minimum seems to be the standard. Not all wanted to go on the record with The 42 but Fish and others were prepared to.
There is nothing nefarious or illegal. The operation is organised, though. There will be Google Sheets of desired tickets, fans in one time zone may wake up to find a message from a member who has been able to secure them.
The tickets are purchased legitimately for matches in tournaments throughout the world and then traded among those in the group, always for face value and also on the basis that a favour will be paid back down the line.
“We are a group based on trust. Profiteering is not allowed,” Fish says. “I may not know some people in the group, but they will be a mate of a mate and their word provides the trust. That is what it’s based on.
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“I can send a ticket to someone in the group and I will know the money is coming back. Sometimes it won’t be for money because I will owe a favour, and if I had to send $500 to someone I know it will be wired safely and the tickets will be sent back.
Sometimes people hear and want to get in, but they’ve only been to one tournament and they only want to take, take take. That’s not what this is about.”
A case in point would be the Italian-American who was left heartbroken by Italy’s defeat to Bosnia and Herzegovina on penalties in the World Cup playoff.
He had tickets already secured but released them for another member who was only too happy to oblige.
That gesture won’t be forgotten.
…..
Seb Larsson – no, not the former Swedish international – is from the lovely seaside town of Lomma, around 15 minutes from Malmö.
He was a Gothenburg fan growing up but not a match-going supporter. He didn’t really follow the Sweden national team either.
Now 36, he was barely old enough to remember the Swedes finishing third at USA 94. They missed out on France 98 and a round of 16 defeat to Senegal followed in 2002, with an exit at the same stage in Germany 2006.
Seb can’t remember the reasoning, but when he and his friends spoke about the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, there was clarity to his thoughts. “Why not go?”
Seb applied for five tickets to the tournament and was successful. When Sweden didn’t qualify, he was unperturbed. A spark of curiosity had been lit. His friends were not so keen and when he told his mother that he was going to travel alone she was understandably cautious.
I was only 20, so I thought ‘why not? It will be fun’. And since then I’ve been hooked. I had a great time in Cape Town and Johannesburg. The parties on the street, the fun. I felt like everyone is dreaming of what I’m doing it and here I am doing it.”
He has been to every Euros and World Cup since.
“And I started following Sweden properly too, home and away… It took me quite a few times to make some connections with people but eventually I did, it’s good to meet people no matter where you’re at.
“I thought ‘if I can go to South Africa and Brazil to the World Cup for four weeks I can travel around Europe to watch Sweden too’.”
So that’s what he has done.
At Euro 2016 he paid for tickets to a game and helped source others for a contact. That is how Seb eventually got into the World Cup Freemasons.
“Without other people’s help, we all wouldn’t be able to do and see the things that we want to. I would not be able to obtain every game I wanted without other people’s help, and the same goes for helping others. That’s the nature of it.”
Seb has a job that allows him to invest the time and finance required. “I’m either fortunate enough to earn money or dumb enough to spend it all on football tickets,” he says.
This tournament will cost in the region of $8,000 (€7,000), with travel and ticket prices making up the bulk. He was fortunate to get some of those rare $60 tickets for Sweden’s three group games.
After the opener with Tunisia in Monterrey, Seb will meet up with some of the Dutch group members in Houston when they face the Netherlands, and also one of the Japanese supporters in the group for their meeting in Dallas.
“I’m not as big a traveller as some other people in the group. I mean, some people watch two, three, four football games a week. I don’t watch that much football compared to them, but I do travel with Sweden and go to the tournaments.
Seb (left), Julia (centre) and another of Seb's friends from home.
“It’s easier to say that you’re gone for a few days a year than to be gone every weekend. I actually made a joke to my girlfriend that I’m… It wasn’t a joke, I said it genuinely, that I’m happy that she supports me and that I’m allowed to do those travels and to go away for a little bit without her.”
As well as Sweden’s game, Seb will be at the USA v Paraguay in Los Angeles, Uzbekistan and Colombia in Mexico City followed by a jaunt to Guadalajara for Mexico v South Korea. Argentina v Austria in Dallas and England v Panama in New Jersey rounds off the group stages, with back-to-back round of 32 games in Boston and the Garden State.
A friend from the group in New York has offered an apartment to use, and after all that travelling he will return to Europe for a holiday with girlfriend Julia, who is from Ukraine, before they return to the Empire State together for the World Cup final.
Seb has a ticket but Julia doesn’t.
“I only have one because I got it from one guy in the group. I got him a final ticket for the last Euros so when he got one this time, he got in touch with me to pass it on.
“It’s definitely a give and take, and the more you give, the more you can get back also. That’s what makes it so great.”
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Meet the World Cup Freemasons: 'We are a group based on trust. Profiteering is not allowed'
THE BUILD UP to this World Cup has been dominated by so many questions about the exorbitant price of pretty much everything associated with the tournament.
Fifa even had to perform a U-turn on wanting to extract as much money by banning fans from bringing their own reusable water bottles into stadiums.
Sure what’s another few dollars spent on Fifa-approved hydration when the cost of a ticket to get into the ground in the first place is in the thousands?
The questions have been loud and continuous.
Why are ticket prices so high?
How can Fifa justify running its own re-sale market, let along taking an additional 15% from both the buyer and seller?
Did fans have the wool pulled over their eyes when selecting seats with dubious seating plans?
Will stadiums be half empty?
How much debt will supporters end up in just to see their team?
Will the Greed Is Good World Cup solely be for the wealthy?
The 42 has already detailed some of these issues as part of the wider geopolitical and social landscape the tournament exists within, but it was during the course of trying to find out more about how fans from around the world plan their journeys that an altogether different set of questions began to emerge, questions that offered some hope and illustrated that even the global game can feel like a village.
What if there was a different way?
What if there were like-minded people from around the world who didn’t care about profit or act purely in self-interest, but off a noble premise of community instead?
What if there was even a way to look out for people you had never met purely on the basis of trust and friendship?
What if there was a group of fans who had travelled the world – some beginning their journey around the globe 50 years ago – and slowly established a sprawling network that allows those in the inner circle to continue their explorations of football’s great cathedrals?
That is what The 42 found, a cooperative where shared values and commitment are rewarded. Where tickets are traded, bank details are even shared, travel is coordinated, and accommodation throughout the world is offered to those among the group.
It is estimated to have between 60 and 70 members, covering almost every corner of the world, from Ireland to India, with some individuals who are extremely wealthy and others who save every cent to attend football when they can.
This week, almost all of them will descend on North America, taking in 104 matches of 48 teams across three countries – Canada, Mexico and the United States.
It is a group without a name, but has members in Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, not to mention throughout Europe and those from the three host nations.
We have christened them ‘The World Cup Freemasons’.
….
Steve ‘Fish’ Fisher has lived a life. The old cliché of measuring it in World Cups rings true because that is always his reference point.
He was a relative late starter when he attended Mexico 86 just after turning 30. He will celebrate his 70th birthday next May and this edition of the tournament will be his 10th.
It could have been his 11th, but life had other plans. Italia 90 came just after he was married and before the birth of his first child. His printing and photography company was also taking off, a business that has allowed him to continue this passion of a lifetime into retirement.
He is a Mancunian, but Fish speaks to The 42 from his gorgeous home overlooking the water near Nanaimo on Vancouver Island.
He is a long way from the 192 bus he’d take in the wind and rain from Manchester to Stockport in the early days of that apprenticeship in printing and photography. It was the 1970s and the three-day week imposed by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government made things feel even more bleak.
Manchester United was Fish’s relief and release. From ’72 to ’79 he went home away with the Red Army. “You always find a way,” he says.
It’s a mantra he has taken with him throughout life, one he always sought to extract the most from. He’s slept in cars, train station floors and under the stars.
But Canada has been his home from the moment he decided to follow his parents to Vancouver Island in his early 20s.
The 1980s were barren for Fish in more ways than one. Not only were Liverpool dominant, but getting to watch United games in Canada was nigh on impossible. Newspapers and magazines would arrive four weeks out of date. There were games from Germany televised every week, but not England.
He’d find what he could on radio, but that was slim pickings. The establishment of the Premier League changed the game, and for Fish it allowed him to continue his entrepreneurial streak.
“My house was nicknamed NASA because of all the satellites I had on the deck,” he says.
Still, games would be infrequent. Once or twice a month he might get United. A chance meeting with people from Setanta Sports took things to a new level. The Celtic and Rangers fans nearby were all better organised and already buying games directly to show.
Fish got in touch with Setanta to make his case. “I bought a huge C-band dish from them and turned it into a sideline job.”
He would tape United games at home and drive 25 minutes into Victoria where he struck a deal with a local pub to show them. Word spread, and not just among his fellow Reds. “There would be 30 to 40 Scousers too so I’d alternate,” Fish says. “A tenner a head to cover the expenses.”
It lasted almost 15 years, serving some of the English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Italian, Portuguese and Croatian immigrants. “It was a really good community of people, I had hundreds and hundreds of people on an email list and by the end I would do out emails each week letting them know what games would be shown.”
The 1986 World Cup in Mexico fuelled Fish’s spirit of adventure even further.
It was perfect. Along with friends who would fill the pub in Victoria, they headed south for the start of the tournament.
Some of the details from the first few days are hazy. “Lots of tequila and dancing on the beach,” Fish says. An overnight bus to Guadalajara left a mark. “Stopping at places you didn’t want to visit.”
The destination made it worthwhile as Fish, along with close friend Tommy Jones, “an Evertonian”, made it for the quarter-final between France and Brazil. When the game went to penalties they watched from the nearest step to the exits in preparation for a mad dash to the airport to catch a flight to Mexico City.
“Platini and Socrates both missed, so I’ll never be hard on any player who misses a penalty,” Fish says.
Just as well seeing as he’s an England fan.
They were playing Argentina the next day in one of the other quarter-finals. A two-hour delay in the airport had everyone on edge, but the man sitting next to Fish was fuming more than most.
Fish headed straight to the Azteca on the morning of the game. “We had to get tickets, didn’t we, and we were able to buy them for cash at the ticket office at the stadium.”
What followed was football history. Maradona’s Hand of God and then his Goal of the Century. “Both just happened in a flash. For the Hand of God you couldn’t tell. We were central enough near the middle of the pitch but I couldn’t tell if it was handball.
“A lot of people around me were unhappy, it was definitely moody after the game, but no one knew for sure. It’s not like you saw replays or were getting messages or could check online.”
The experiences of the first 30 years of Fish’s life, with Mexico 86 as a kind of totem pole to adventure, helped to shape the 40 years that followed and the values of the World Cup Freemasons.
“There are a lot of things that are shit in modern football,” Fish says. “With the group, we look out for each other, I suppose there is a comfort knowing you won’t be ripped off.
“There is a massive amount of local knowledge from people in the group throughout the world. We travel to games and are like-minded people trading tickets, giving each other help and advice. If I need a bed somewhere in Holland for a game, I know there is someone I can go to.
“If I need to know the score about a game in Slovakia or Prague, there will be people I can go to.”
An example; three members of the group based on different continents will stay with Fish at the start of their World Cup journey on Monday. He has arranged their 90-minute ferry to the mainland where Turkey play Australia, and from there will drive them three hours on to Seattle for Belgium against Egypt.
They will go their separate ways from there, and for Fish he has been able to source tickets for his wife and kids for Canada games, and reckons his average cost per ticket is around $500 (€430).
“We knew they would take the piss with prices but even from planning two years out we didn’t think it would be this extreme,” he says. “I bought my ticket for the final in 1994 on the day of the game, I don’t think that will happen now.”
Trust is the core principle, there are no formal requirements for entry, although a four-tournament minimum seems to be the standard. Not all wanted to go on the record with The 42 but Fish and others were prepared to.
There is nothing nefarious or illegal. The operation is organised, though. There will be Google Sheets of desired tickets, fans in one time zone may wake up to find a message from a member who has been able to secure them.
The tickets are purchased legitimately for matches in tournaments throughout the world and then traded among those in the group, always for face value and also on the basis that a favour will be paid back down the line.
“We are a group based on trust. Profiteering is not allowed,” Fish says. “I may not know some people in the group, but they will be a mate of a mate and their word provides the trust. That is what it’s based on.
“I can send a ticket to someone in the group and I will know the money is coming back. Sometimes it won’t be for money because I will owe a favour, and if I had to send $500 to someone I know it will be wired safely and the tickets will be sent back.
A case in point would be the Italian-American who was left heartbroken by Italy’s defeat to Bosnia and Herzegovina on penalties in the World Cup playoff.
He had tickets already secured but released them for another member who was only too happy to oblige.
That gesture won’t be forgotten.
…..
Seb Larsson – no, not the former Swedish international – is from the lovely seaside town of Lomma, around 15 minutes from Malmö.
He was a Gothenburg fan growing up but not a match-going supporter. He didn’t really follow the Sweden national team either.
Now 36, he was barely old enough to remember the Swedes finishing third at USA 94. They missed out on France 98 and a round of 16 defeat to Senegal followed in 2002, with an exit at the same stage in Germany 2006.
Seb can’t remember the reasoning, but when he and his friends spoke about the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, there was clarity to his thoughts. “Why not go?”
Seb applied for five tickets to the tournament and was successful. When Sweden didn’t qualify, he was unperturbed. A spark of curiosity had been lit. His friends were not so keen and when he told his mother that he was going to travel alone she was understandably cautious.
He has been to every Euros and World Cup since.
“And I started following Sweden properly too, home and away… It took me quite a few times to make some connections with people but eventually I did, it’s good to meet people no matter where you’re at.
“I thought ‘if I can go to South Africa and Brazil to the World Cup for four weeks I can travel around Europe to watch Sweden too’.”
So that’s what he has done.
At Euro 2016 he paid for tickets to a game and helped source others for a contact. That is how Seb eventually got into the World Cup Freemasons.
“Without other people’s help, we all wouldn’t be able to do and see the things that we want to. I would not be able to obtain every game I wanted without other people’s help, and the same goes for helping others. That’s the nature of it.”
Seb has a job that allows him to invest the time and finance required. “I’m either fortunate enough to earn money or dumb enough to spend it all on football tickets,” he says.
This tournament will cost in the region of $8,000 (€7,000), with travel and ticket prices making up the bulk. He was fortunate to get some of those rare $60 tickets for Sweden’s three group games.
After the opener with Tunisia in Monterrey, Seb will meet up with some of the Dutch group members in Houston when they face the Netherlands, and also one of the Japanese supporters in the group for their meeting in Dallas.
“I’m not as big a traveller as some other people in the group. I mean, some people watch two, three, four football games a week. I don’t watch that much football compared to them, but I do travel with Sweden and go to the tournaments.
“It’s easier to say that you’re gone for a few days a year than to be gone every weekend. I actually made a joke to my girlfriend that I’m… It wasn’t a joke, I said it genuinely, that I’m happy that she supports me and that I’m allowed to do those travels and to go away for a little bit without her.”
As well as Sweden’s game, Seb will be at the USA v Paraguay in Los Angeles, Uzbekistan and Colombia in Mexico City followed by a jaunt to Guadalajara for Mexico v South Korea. Argentina v Austria in Dallas and England v Panama in New Jersey rounds off the group stages, with back-to-back round of 32 games in Boston and the Garden State.
A friend from the group in New York has offered an apartment to use, and after all that travelling he will return to Europe for a holiday with girlfriend Julia, who is from Ukraine, before they return to the Empire State together for the World Cup final.
Seb has a ticket but Julia doesn’t.
“I only have one because I got it from one guy in the group. I got him a final ticket for the last Euros so when he got one this time, he got in touch with me to pass it on.
“It’s definitely a give and take, and the more you give, the more you can get back also. That’s what makes it so great.”
That’s what makes the World Cup Freemasons.
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