Desperate Indonesia fans burn ticket booth
Reuters - Monday 21 November 2011, 11:55
Success-starved Indonesia
football fans, desperate to watch the final of a regional
tournament against rivals Malaysia, set a ticket booth on fire
at the national stadium in Jakarta ahead of the game on Monday.
Police doused the flames and fired warning shots in the air,
scattering a crowd of thousands of supporters who were unable to
get into the Bung Karno Stadium, with a capacity of 88,000,
after tickets quickly sold out.
Indonesia saw off Vietnam in their semi-final and are
expecting home advantage to help them to victory in the final of
the Southeast Asia Games, in a re-match of their ASEAN Cup final
clash last December that Malaysia won.
In the first leg of that game in Kuala Lumpur, Indonesia
players walked off the pitch and accused local fans of dazzling
them with laser beams, returning to the field only to be thumped
3-0.
The two neighbouring nations have a history of spats outside
sport, from ownership of maritime territory to culinary
heritage.
Despite being by far the biggest country in the area,
Indonesia last won a regional football gold in 1991 and have never
won the ASEAN Cup.
Indonesia is the world's fourth most populous country with
around 240 million people but has played only once at the World
Cup, in 1938.