“I will sue the organisers for bad organisation,” the former Wimbledon regular – once officially rated the world’s best player – told Compact, the city’s daily, after “Nasty” and his wife Amelia had been forced to stand up through the whole show.

The paper ran the story under a “Scandal In Tribuna VIP” (“Scandal In The VIP stand) headline, while the July 19 editions of other national dailies and music papers led with “Questionable Organisation” (Romania Libera), “Organisation Below Standard” (Adevarul), “Organisation Not Worth A Penny” (7 Plus), “Success Undermined By Organisation” (Cotidianul) and “Audience Faced Organisers’ Negligence That Led To Insufficient Drinks” (Evenimentul Zilei).

“The people that got to the stadium had to put up not only with the unbearable heat but also with the insufficiency of stands providing water, soda and beer. The demand for drinks exceeded what was available, as more and more people kept arriving at the concert,” said the following day’s Ziarul Financiar.

There were so many complaints on music and blog sites, with many attributing the blame to the wrong promoter, that Emag!c Entertainment – which put on the city’s June 29 to July 1 B’Estival – put a note on its Web site saying it had nothing to do with the organisation of the show.

Sorina Burlacu of Bucharest-based Events, the Vodafone-sponsored show’s local promoter, declined to answer questions about the event until she’d received “an official demand from Pollstar for an interview,” but Wolfgang Klinger from Rock & More in Austria – the act’s regular promoter throughout most of The Balkans – says it was “extremely successful” and the visiting crew, the tour management and the band had congratulated both companies for “organising this great event.”

He dismissed reports on Pro TV, a Central European Media Enterprise-owned network that was also one of the show’s media partners, saying 280 people received Red Cross treatment – mainly for exhaustion and dehydration.

He pointed out that’s not so many people among a 60,000 crowd in 40 degrees Celsius and blamed the lack of VIP seats on the fact that the stadium had been “rented with the chairs but they’d disappeared on show day.”

“We have competitors in this market as with everywhere and they are angry that we had the success and not them. They were using a lot of lousy tricks to spoil our show. We have done it and we have learned a lot and we will use this knowledge for the next shows,” Klinger told Pollstar.

The responsibility for the lack of drinks has become a bone of contention as Events said it wasn’t responsible for the lack of outlets, although the Romanian office of European brewers Tuborg soon countered by posting a note on its own www.tuborg.ro site that said it had worked every outlet that had been allocated to it.

Other crowd complaints centred on the security and ambulance services selling water for exorbitant prices and the fact that the front of stage area where tickets cost euro 62 – roughly the average weekly wage in Romania – didn’t have any catering outlets or toilet facilities.

The nearest were further towards the back where the tickets were around euro 27, but many of those with tickets for the front claimed they stayed in that area because it was too crowded in front of the stage.

They also moaned because there were too many people on the entire pitch area – Lia Minoliu is the national soccer stadium – but Klinger says that wasn’t the case.

“It definitely wasn’t overcrowded. I had a look from the top of the grandstand down to the field. After 30 years organising such events I have a good feeling for such things,” he explained.

At 60,000 the concert was the biggest contemporary live music event that Romania’s ever seen, beating the 45,000 that Emag!c managed for last year’s sold-out Depeche Mode show in the same venue.