Following the
jubilation of qualifying for next year’s soccer World Cup in Germany,
Australian soccer fans are being warned to prepare for massive disappointment,
and that’s not only if we draw Brazil, Argentina, and Spain in our group.

As reported in The Age,
Australia may only be allocated 2000 tickets by FIFA.

In all, there are
about 3.2 million tickets available, with a portion reserved for media, VIPs et
al. Germany is allocated 800,000 for hosting the event,
leaving approximately 2,647,000 purchasable tickets available to punters over
64 matches.

So, let’s do the math.
If Australia receives only 2000 of those, we’ve been given 0.0008 per cent of the total allocation. Hmmm. Fair enough, we
don’t have the World Cup history of Brazil or the soccer mad public of Britain, but that doesn’t seem proportionate considering
Australia is one of only 32 teams actually competing
this time around. (By the way, splitting
the tickets equally between the 32 teams would have meant 82,718 tickets for
Aussies.)

FIFA will release news
of the final ticket allocation after the draw has been done this Saturday. But
given that tickets were oversubscribed in the first ballot by 10 to 1, it seems
local fans will need to be at least 8000 times as committed to getting to the
World Cup as the Socceroos – now known as the Footballoos – have been.

Whatever the outcome,
we’ll be interested to see how many tickets the other competing nations are
allocated. If you have any info on who they’re all going to, drop us a line at
sport@crikey.com.au.