Brazil-England semifinal: Tickets gone in a few hours

Kolkata, October 25
With all the tickets for the England-Brazil Under-17 FIFA World Cup semifinal lapped up by fans, a capacity crowd of 66,600 is expected when the football giants lock horns on Wednesday at the Vivekananda Yuva Bharati Krirangan (VYBK).
Football buffs, who logged in to the ticketing section of the official website on Tuesday for buying e-tickets, were heartbroken to find “sold out” splashed on the screen.
The frenzy for the tickets had started soon after FIFA shifted the match to VYBK from Indira Gandhi Athletic Stadium, Guwahati, due to poor ground conditions after days of heavy rainfall. FIFA also announced that the tickets would only be available online. While 20,000 netizens had registered on the website at 7.15 pm, over an hour before the scheduled start of sales at 8.30pm on Tuesday, the number of registrations crossed 1.50 lakh in the first three hours. Fans had to endure a waiting time of more than an hour after logging on to the site, as the ticketing window for the match opened in short spells of 10 minutes.
The number of ticket seekers swelled with every passing minute, and the tickets got exhausted sometime after midnight. Incidentally, VYBK — the largest stadium in India — has a sitting capacity of 85,000. Due to security and logistical reasons, the capacity has been reduced to 66,600 for the FIFA U-17 World Cup.
Body cameras for stewards
Body cameras will be fitted on the stewards on duty in the galleries during the remaining three matches for constant monitoring of the crowd to prevent any untoward incident.