An England fan who took a sick day to attend the Euro 2020 semi final between England and Denmark was sacked after she was spotted on TV celebrating.
Nina Farooqi made the journey south to Wembley stadium from her home in Bradford - but she was captured on the ITV broadcast and even featured on Stacey Dooley's Instagram story - as the Manchester Evening News reports.
In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, the England super-fan said she's currently feeling mixed emotions after the national team's semi final triumph.
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She said: "We’re through to the final, I’m still on that high, but I’ve also lost my job.
"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.
"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.
“I was even on Stacey Dooley's Instagram story. My phone blew up. The whole world had seen me celebrating. The rational part of me thought, 'oh no, is this going to come back to haunt me?'
"They said they’d seen I’d been at the game, and I was honest about why I did it. 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."
Her former employer at Composite Prime said they would have encouraged attending such an important game, but the circumstances on this occasion left them with no other option.
Charles Taylor said: “"Unfortunately on this occasion our employee lied, taking one day off sick to attend the football match on Wednesday, July 7.
"This was in breach of her employment contract and so we had no choice but to take the appropriate action. As a business we value honesty and integrity, and we don't tolerate any employee taking advantage of our policies.
"Like many businesses will be doing across the county, our staff will be having Monday morning off to hopefully recover from celebrating an England win!”
England take on Italy in the Euro 2020 final at 8pm on Sunday.
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