I didn’t get a good night’s sleep last night. Why? Because I was deliberating over whether or not to even apply for the ballot for the Champions League final.

How mental is that?

I am a season ticket holder. I have been going for decades and have been a season ticket holder for nearly two decades. I have achieved the requirement for home ticket allocation this season. I have always promised myself that, come hell or high water, if Arsenal ever get to a European Cup final of any level, I will be there. It is a real ‘bucket list’ thing. It’s something I’ve dreamed of. In 2006 is was 23-years-old, in my first job, I hadn’t got my season ticket yet, and I couldn’t have afforded the trip either, given that I was only just a year into my first job. I was gutted I couldn’t experience it, but at that age, and with our recent history of winning trophies, I always thought “there will be another opportunity”.

When we reached the Europa League Final in 2019, I said: “I’m going”. I was convinced that, despite some of the murmurings about how difficult it is to travel to Baku, I would find a way. Well, we all know what a farce that was, with tickets being given out to the locals because of the sheer lack of available travel plans for normal fans.

Yet here we are, 20 years after that 2006 Paris final. Seven years after Baku, and normal match-going fans are once again being shafted. If I put myself in the ballot, the chances are that even if I am fortunate enough to be one of the circa 25% of fans that might get my ticket, I’m going to be asked to pay £821 for my ticket. £821. For a football match.

It is a disgrace. UEFA are a disgrace.

I was asked on BBC London yesterday evening to talk about it – I dumbed down how I was feeling for obvious reasons. But I am furious.

By the way, I know this is an ‘us’ problem now, but it has been a problem for all fans for several years. I had a quick check at the price of tickets for fans in Munich last season. The same. The top category was the same price. The second was €650. The third was €180. Yet you can bet your bottom dollar there will be plenty of neutral ‘influencers’ who make their way to that final at the end of May.

F*ck UEFA. They have priced fans out of football yet again. And have been doing it for years.

This should still be one or two more days of basking in the glow of a Champions League Final. Yet I am having sleepless nights on whether or not I have to essentially spend a big chunk of my monthly wage packet, for a 24-hour trip to Budapest. And I find myself having to seriously consider whether I can afford it. I am literally being priced out of watching my team play in a game they haven’t played in 20 years.

There will be people who read this and think “Boo-f*cking-hoo. You get to go to games, you can clearly afford the season ticket, and there are those in the world who can’t even dream of even watching one game in their life in the Premier League, let alone a Champions League final,” and I get it. I appreciate that I am lucky. But just because of that, it shouldn’t make me feel any less outraged at the prohibitive nature of what many consider a working person’s sport. It isn’t. It is for the ultra-rich. It is for the one-percenters. Probably the 0.1%-ers, actually, and that stinks. Football should not be marginalised. It should be something that everyone has the opportunity to be part of as a fan. It stinks.

And it’s worse for the World Cup. I’m not going to go to America, I have no interest in watching that live, but I saw something on Sky Sports yesterday, in which there was a ticket on sale for $11million. Yep – you did not read that wrong. One ticket to the World Cup Final for that money. That is the worst football-related ticketing thing I have ever seen in my life. Land of the free and home of the broke if you want to be a football fan in the States. Oh, unless you’re a billionaire, or some kind of Instagram influencer like that Speed twat. I bet he’ll be on the pitch in Budapest at some stage, doing the stupid noises that he does.

Sorry, a bit ranty this morning, but it’s hard, you know? This was meant to be a joyous occasion. But I just feel frustrated at the ticketing news. And some go home and away. These people deserve priority, of course they do, but you can’t tell me that 16,824 tickets for Arsenal fans is acceptable in a 67,000-seater stadium. That’s not right. That’s a farce.

But as the ‘ordinary folk’, there’s nothing we can do. We are just the riff raff. We don’t count in football. And every fan from every team that has played in the competition for years has complained about pricing. But it has got worse last season and this season. Do you want to know how much the most expensive price was in 2024 at Wembley?

£610. Here is the official UEFA website to show that price.

In euro’s that is €705. This season it is €950. That is a 35% price increase in two years for the most expensive ticket. During that time in the change in inflation value (which you can calculate on the Bank of England website here) has gone up by 5.2. So £610 in 2024 is the equivalent cost (as of March 2026) of £641.45. So even if you take inflation into account, UEFA has jacked the prices up last year and this year by 28%. They are passing on an additional third of the price of the ticket to the fans. An utter joke.

Right, I’ll leave it there for now. On the upside, if you want some more content to feast on from the actual football side, Amanda and James did a post-Atleti pod last night which you can watch here if you like. Other than that, I’ll be back tomorrow as we look ahead to that massive game against West Ham. See you then.