Well... ticket sales for this years Champions League Final (Athens 2007) seem to have ended up in a right old mess. I'm watching it on TV at the moment (as the poor and distant are wont to do), and things seem noisy enough so i'd hope that most of the loyal fans who tried their best to go have managed to, but there has been an unhappy sinister note to the way the whole thing has been handled.

* WHAT A ROULETTE FROM KAKA! *

Anyways, sorry... back to the business. The first big problem, is that forged tickets have flooded the market - there are said to be in excess of 1500 tickets, and arrests have already been made, although the number in circulation is thought to be huge. Many fans had bought tickets in advance, and some are concerned that these might now be fake , which is heartbreaking considering that the minimum paid was probably about €400.

* TYPICAL OPPORTUNISM FROM PIPP INZAGHI, MILAN 1-0 UP. STUPID HALF-TIME PANELISTS SAY HANDBALL, I SAY WATCH THE REPLAYS PROPERLY *

Fans have also been sadly let down by the system in this case. The Spiros Louis Stadium holds only 63,000, so the per club allocation of roughly 17,000 tickets was never that large to begin with. Fans have thus had to go around to all manner of touts and ticket agencies to try and find those golden tickets, and have these been very vulnerable to trouble. Many ticket agencies sold packages to clients without having the requisite number of tickets in hand, and they did so in anticipation of ticket prices falling, and subsequently making huge profits. Unfortunately that never happened, and so several hopeful fans have been left in the lurch. The majority of these agencies simply took the money and ran, and obviously since the deals were dodgy to begin with, the clients could do nothing.

Travel & sports travel companies weren't much better - most of them refunded the ticket cost (face values) to the fans, but kept the travel expenses portion of it - presumably under the argument that said fans could still have gone and had a holiday and stay in some hotel.

* SECOND HALF AND LIVERPOOL ARE 2-0 DOWN. PERFECT FINISHING FROM PIPPO INZAGHI AGAIN, AND MILAN HAVE SHOWN THEIR PEDIGREE *

Adriano Galliani didn't help things this with his statements saying that only season ticket holders should receive tickets to the final (not sure how much this affected things, especially because Italian fans are the most notorious sellers of their tickets). When you consider the fact that Liverpool and Milan are two of the world's biggest and most popular clubs, it becomes obvious that the ex-pat and international fans would probably be travelling in numbers rivalling those of the local fans.

There is also the great story of the one Italian tour operator who was selling close to 3,000 ticket packages for the final, but actually had 0 tickets. He had anticipated receiving these tickets directly from Milan, and that never materialised. I'm not sure whether the fans eventually received any money back, but I hope they did. So much for the beautiful game eh?

* MILAN WIN. 2-1 AT FULLTIME WITH A CONSOLATION GOAL FROM KUYT. HE WAS OFFSIDE WHEN CROUCH FLICKED IT ON, BUT IT TOUCHED MALDINI ON THE WAY THROUGH AND SO IT STANDS. IT WAS A SCARE FOR MILAN, BUT THEY COMFORTABLY WRAP THE GAME UP, AND IT WAS MEN vs BOYS REALLY *