KOLKATA: The last minute shifting of Wednesday's Brazil-England Under-17 FIFA World Cup semi-final tie from Guwahati to Kolkata saw over 150,000 soccer fans registering online on the FIFA website on Monday evening.
The venue had to be shifted due to the poor condition of the playing field at Guwahati's Indira Gandhi Athletic Stadium following heavy rains over the past few days.
A report in The Hindu quotes an official as saying that strong objections from three-time champion Brazil led to the shifting of the semifinal to Kolkata. The Brazil squad, which travelled to Guwahati on Monday morning was flown back to Kolkata along with their English counterparts late on Monday.
Tournament director Javier Ceppi conducted an inspection of the venue along with the Brazil officials. The LOC and the state government held a three-hour long meeting on various logistics after it was decided to shift the venue.
Both the Brazil and England teams were not happy with the conditions and were worried about players picking up injuries. Made to play under a steady downpour, Ghana had also objected to the condition of the ground in the quarterfinals, which it lost 2-1 to Mali, a couple of days ago, The Hindu reports. The local organisers pressed helicopters into service, but the pitch retained water in some areas.
West Bengal sports minister Aroop Biswas told the media that the state government was given only an hour by the LOC to decide whether the administration could make arrangements for the game if relocated to Kolkata.
At 6 pm on Monday, FIFA officially announced the semi-final had been shifted to Kolkata’s Vivekananda Yuva Bharati Krirangan (VYBK) because of poor ground condition at Guwahati’s Indira Gandhi Athletic Stadium and announced that online purchase of tickets would start at 8.30 pm.
“Around 7.15 p.m., there are already around 20,000 people in the queue,” said FIFA Local Organising Committee (LOC) project director Joy Bhattacharjya.
FIFA has also announced that while fans who had purchased tickets for the Guwahati encounter would be entitled for a refund, they “will also have priority access to purchase tickets for the Kolkata semi-final”.
“Around 17,500 tickets were sold to the public in Guwahati. We have kept provision for those who wish to come to Kolkata to watch the game. They won’t face any problems,” said Bhattacharjya. He said because of the short time available, efforts were being made to open as many counters as possible for redemption of online tickets.
Kolkata's Salt Lake Stadium, which had been initially allotted as many as 10 matches of the U-17 World Cup by Fifa, will thus end up holding 11 matches. The second semi-final — between Mali and Spain — will be played as per schedule on Wednesday, from 8pm at the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai.
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