Germans Still standing Firm on ticket Sales.

WORLD Cup organisers are standing by their ticketing arrangements despite fierce criticism from the head of football's world governing body and fans frustrated in their attempts to swap tickets.

With just under four weeks to go until the tournament kicks off, organisers say they will prove their system works.
The crux of the problem is the way the 2.5 million tickets for the June 9 to July 9 finals have been sold through the Internet to 'ordinary' fans.

Applicants were asked to supply their name and passport or ID card number which are entered on the ticket.

FIFA President Sepp Blatter criticised the organisers' refusal to drop its insistence that every ticket must be checked against a passport or ID card before its holder can enter a stadium.

"There has been no movement towards a more flexible solution because they say they have to control every single visitor to the stadium," he said in London.


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Mr Blatter acknowledged the organisers were bowing to security demands imposed on them by the German Government, but said they risked causing huge delays in getting crowds of up to 75,000 through the turnstiles and into their seats in time for kickoff.
"It's obvious if you do this it will cause delays. How long will it take to let people into the stadium?" Mr Blatter said.

But the organisers are confident they will make their system work.

"We know that FIFA has confidence in us, despite the views expressed by the president, and we will do everything we can to prove that the fears are ungrounded," Jens Grittner, a spokesman for the organising committee, told AFP.

Mr Blatter also said it should be made possible to easily transfer a ticket to another member of the holder's family, which under the organisers' rules is not permitted and could see the new holder prevented from entering the stadium.

The only way to transfer tickets is under a special portal on the www.FIFAworldcup.com ticket website, which received 52,653 requests for transfers up to April 9.

Mr Grittner said about 9,000 of those applicants were rejected. The transfer requests of 3000 of them are being considered by a ticket ombudsman and a second phase for transfers has now opened.

However, some fans complain that the conditions under which transfers are allowed are unclear.

Luke Harding, an Englishman living in Berlin, managed to buy 12 match tickets - four each for three first-round games, including Germany v Ecuador - by applying in the names of his family.

Now he wants to transfer some of the tickets to his children's teachers as a thank-you present, but fears his attempts will end in failure.

"There has been no clarity about the regulations for the transfer at all. It is incredibly frustrating.

"Sometimes you get the impression that someone has to have died before it is allowed.

"At the same time FIFA gave more than 450,000 tickets to sponsors who can give them more or less to whomever they want."

Fans who have not managed to buy tickets yet can still try their luck in the fifth and final ticket sales phase, run on a first-come-first-served basis, which started on May 1.