World Cup tickets sell so quickly
WITH some 500 days to go before kick-off, France counting down to the 16th football World Cup finals - and preparations are running at full swing.
'Our aim to make the last World Cup of the century a festival for the whole world is taking shape. Everything is going according to plan,' said Michel Platini, co-president of the organising committee.
Advance bookings for the 2.5 million World Cup tickets have exceeded even the optimistic expectations.
Within just two months, French football fans have ordered almost a million of the tickets. In the major cities, some ticket allocations are even sold out.
'This shows that people have really taken to our World Cup idea. We want to offer our guests and the French public the biggest event since the bicentenniel celebrations of the revolution,' Platini.
A massive construction and modernisation programme is underway in the nine stadiums - in Paris, Lens, Lyons, St Etienne, Marseilles, Montpellier, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Nantes - for what will be the biggest World Cup in football history with, for the first time, 32 teams and 64 matches from June 10 to July 12 next year.
