Real Madrid rarely allow access to their facilities or players, but they do still have an annual open training session, allowing fans the gift of seeing their favourite players up close while training around Christmas time.
That will take place at Valdebebas on the 30th of December this year, with 6,000 tickets sold for the occasion. They went on sale at 10:00am from the Real Madrid training ground on the 26th of December, but it was not a happy occasion. Fans queued for six hours to get their tickets, with many left without at the end of that queue.
“We have been here since half past nine in the morning to get the tickets. We are lifelong members of Madrid and this is complete chaos, it should have been organised much better,” said one fan, as recounted by Sport.
“We’ve gone through it all, in the morning it was very cold and now we are dying of heat,” said another after more than five hours in line.
‘Disgrace’, ‘chaos’ and ‘frustration’ were other words used, while one fan noted that of the 18 ticket gates they had, only a few were open in the morning, which reached five in the afternoon.
Real Madrid fans obviously benefit from their membership, but increasingly it has been seen that Los Blancos are pursuing a different type of fan. During a recent report on the new facilities at the Santiago Bernabeu, it was made explicitly clear that they wanted fans to come and spend money at the stadium for two to three hours before the match, rather than just supporting their football team.
