The South Korean national football team will have a friendly with FIFA’s top-ranked Brazil at Seoul World Cup Stadium at 8 p.m. next Thursday. It will be English Premiere League’s Tottenham player Son Heung-min’s first match in his home country since he became the first Asian awardee of the Golden Boot in the EPL. Brazil’s global football star Neymar of Paris Saint Germain will visit South Korea for the first time in nine years since 2013.
The two A-class stars have gained a growing attention since their match was scheduled to take place. As soon as tickets to this match became available for sale at 5 p.m. on Wednesday on a ticket selling website, as many as 740,000 people rushed to the platform, which instantly was shut down. The ticket hunting ended in just four hours with all available 64,000 tickets sold out.
Getting the jitters, those still desperate for tickets immediately redirected to online marketplaces such as Daangn Market and Joonggonara where users commonly sell and buy secondhand goods. A number of posts were uploaded sellers and buyers to transact the popular tickets across these platforms on Wednesday when tickets were officially available for sale. As a growing number of fans flocked to buy tickets, premiums on tickets soared although the market price of the ticket had already was set higher slightly than the official selling price.
South football fans may have to get fully ready again to buy tickets to a friendly with Egypt armed with Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah, the joint winner of this season’s Golden Boot with Son who competed for the title until the last minute. Salah is also one of the world’s most famous football stars widely supported not only by Egyptian and European fans but also across South Korea. The face-to-face match between the joint Golden Boot winners will determine which one is the real champion, giving football fans every reason to be excited and trilled by their competition. Tickets to the game with Egypt will be available for sale on June 9 or so.
Dong-Wook Kim creating@donga.com