A woman has been fired from her job after calling in sick to attend the England vs Denmark Euro 2020 semi-final.
Nina Farooqi, 37, skipped work on Wednesday in favour of watching the game at Wembley, but was caught out on live TV as she celebrated England’s first goal.
At half-time, friends messaged her to tell her they had spotted her, and on Thursday morning Ms Farooqi received a text from her boss telling her to “not bother coming in”.
The digital content producer from Ilkley in Bradford said a friend had won tickets in a work raffle and knew she would not be able to book the day off as her work was short-staffed.
But while the football mega fan thought she could blend in with the 66,000 fans at the stadium, her cover was blown as she was shown draped in an England flag to nearly 30 million people across the country.
“[My bosses] said they’d seen I’d been at the game, and I was honest about why I did it,” Ms Farooqi told The Telegraph.
“But I didn’t get any sympathy at all and they said that’s it. That’s their call and the consequence of what I did.
“There is a bit of regret, no one wants to get fired, but then also I would have hated the regret of missing out. I’d do it all over again”.
According to her LinkedIn profile, Ms Farooqi also freelances as a football photographer and content producer with a focus on the FA Women’s Super League.
She was also captured in a clip of the match on TV presenter Stacey Dooley’s Instagram story on Wednesday.
“We were all over the news, my face was on every television screen across the world – I had friends from Australia and America telling me they’d seen me,” said Ms Farooqi.
But she added: “My friend won the ticket in her work ballot, and knew I’d do anything to get to the game – there was no way I was going to turn it down.
“This hasn’t come around since 1996, I vividly remember crying on my mum’s sofa when Gareth Southgate missed his penalty, and the football fan in me just couldn’t do it. Football is my life.”
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3qWA0I5
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