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SAFA CEO Lydia Monyepao has somewhat surprisingly revealed that the association “mobilised” DR Congo fans via their embassy, which led to her not being surprised that the away fans outnumbered the home support at Orlando Stadium on Tuesday.
Thirty minutes before kick-off only 2,387 tickets had been sold, according to iDiski Times sources, with an overall number of 9,140 tickets given out at that time.
But as the game went on, more and more DRC fans entered the stadium and made it feel like a home game away from home for the visitors.
After the match, both Man of the Match Lyle Foster and Bafana coach Hugo Broos expressed their disappointment in the low attendance of SA fans, but Monyepao revealed that SAFA themselves played a role in getting a larger amount of DRC fans into the stands.
“Well, it’s an incredible attendance. We went out to mobilise for more supporters following Saturday,” she told Thabiso Mosia on Radio2000.
“On Saturday, we saw that the attendance was quite low. But obviously we knew this was a midweek game, and the attendance might not have been what we wanted.
“But we knew there was a lot of interest, especially given the opponent, DR Congo following their game against Sudan and them qualifying for AFCON.
“We knew there was a lot of interest, but especially from the Congolese fans to see their team in action here.
“We’ve spoken to the embassy of DRC as well, in terms of mobilising people on their side. So obviously some of this crowd is because of them.”
When it was put to her that she doesn’t seem surprised about the high number of DRC fans, Monyepao responded cryptically: “I can’t tell you another secret why such high numbers.”
The SAFA CEO then explained that the kick-off was set at 5pm to accommodate a request of the visitors to ease their travel arrangements after the match.
“Initially we had a 6pm kick-off, given it’s a midweek game and know that a lot of people are knocking off work at 5pm,” Monyepao explained.
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“But we could be flexible with the time, given the situation that we were in, the DR Congo FA approached us ‘can we move the game a bit earlier’ because they’ve got some players that need to make their way back to Europe and some of our players as well.
“So we understood that. We knew there was a midnight flight back to DRC as well, so we had to accommodate them. It’s an international friendly so we had to make them comfortable following the game.”
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