I saw the stadium chaos before England vs Argentina – it was wilder than the game | UK | News
“You’ll have to stand down. Now,” shouted the giant police officer, placing his hands on the butt of his rifle, “I won’t tell you again.”
But the crowd had nowhere to go. The queue, which was orderly just 20 minutes ago, had now turned into a chaotic mess.
An unhappy Argentinian slammed his plastic cup against the metal railing, while an Englishman shouted “let us in, dammit”.
The answer of the 1.80 tall security guard responsible for the entrance to the stadium was, “If you don’t listen, no one can get in.”
This made people even more angry. There was shouting, swearing and pushing.
Missing the kick-off of the huge England-Argentina game would upset most people, but to be honest, I’ve never seen such an angry bunch of journalists before.
Somehow, in the biggest match of the World Cup so far, the stadium in Atlanta had managed to underestimate the number of media members in attendance.
They had arranged only a single entrance for hundreds of journalists to attend, and the queue at the media entrance was longer than at other parts of the stadium.
Few people are upset that journalists now have to wait in the scorching Atlanta sun; It is, of course, a privilege to report on these events.
However, keep in mind that there are TV presenters who will go live and suddenly disappear because they cannot reach the broadcast. Deadlines for articles were being missed, and angry editors were on the phone demanding to know why no content was being returned.
“We need to work,” several of the journalists pleaded, then more angrily, “Let us in, we need to work.”
The reason for the chaotic scenes was nonsense. An underestimation of media numbers resulted in an insufficient number of tags used to indicate that a bag had been picked up by security.
The search for striped labels to be placed on the bags blocked the security gate completely, preventing media access to the stadium.
This sparked some wild scenes that were more intense than some of the on-field action in even the testy match between England and Argentina.
