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England U21s v. Italy U21s @ Wembley


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BBC Story

 

FA site crashes in Wembley rush

 

Demand for tickets for the first competitive match at London's rebuilt Wembley stadium has caused the Football Association's website to crash.

 

Sixty thousand £10 tickets went on sale at 1500 GMT for England's Under 21 match against Italy on March 24.

 

It is a test event which it is hoped will allow a safety certificate to be issued, enabling Wembley to stage May's FA Cup Final before a 90,000 crowd.

 

The FA said there were early problems, but they had been fixed.

 

A spokesman said tickets had been selling at the rate of 6,000 an hour.

 

He added the FA was confident it would sell-out the 60,000 tickets, an "unheard of" amount for an under-21 game.

 

But still not every attempt to buy tickets was successful. At 1830 GMT on Monday the site carried this message:

 

"Apologies, but due to massive interest in the England Under 21 match at the new Wembley Stadium, we have currently closed the queue for tickets.

 

"Please try again later."

 

The 24 March game is one of two "ramp-up" events that will enable the £757m stadium to test its facilities and obtain a safety certificate from Brent Borough Council.

 

The first "ramp-up" event, also with a 60,000 capacity, is a Community Day primarily for local Brent residents to visit and view the facility on 17 March.

 

Keys handover

 

If these events are a success they will pave the way for the FA Cup final to be held there, with a full crowd capacity, on 19 May.

 

Construction firm Multiplex handed over the keys to the stadium to the FA on Friday, signalling an end to building work.

 

The project has been dogged by delays and increasing costs and will open more than a year late.

 

The old Wembley, which opened in 1924, closed in 2000 and was demolished in 2002.

 

FA chief executive Brian Barwick described the handover of the keys as a "significant step" towards staging the FA Cup Final.

 

The first concert scheduled for the revamped stadium is set to be George Michael on 9 June.

 

Anyone else going to this? £10 for adults, £5 for kids.

 

I never got to the old Wembley and so when I heard the tickets for this match were going on-sale today I thought I'd ring a couple of the lads and see if anyone was up for it. 2 hours of sitting on the sometimes-broken/sometimes-refreshing FA Website finally paid off as I managed to get tickets in the South East Corner of the new ground, after much arse-twitching.

 

Then it was off to GNER.com to sort out train tickets, which proved to be a royal scare as well because I'd spotted return tickets (Fri-Sun) for £50 each and by the time I'd phoned around to see if the times were okay they'd fucking vanished from the website! The next available prices were over £100 each. Astounding. Cue more arse-twitching, until I thought I'd phone GNER with a dodgy story to "complain" that I'd had the cheaper tickets in my basket and the page had "refreshed automatically", causing them to vanish. The lass on the other end of the phone was great and gave me the seats for the same price as I had originally saw them at. Result.

 

Next stop was to find some decent accomodation and £60 each for two nights has got us into some snazzy-looking apartments in between Wembley and Central London, with a tube station right nearby.

 

£125 each for two nights in the Smoke, complete with train travel and match tickets. I'm amazed it's been so cheap.

 

Does anyone on here bother watching England much? I've never seen any type of England team play anywhere before. Not really that arsed about them. Should be good if only for the fact that Taylor and Milner should be playing and Nigel Pearson will be managing them, as Stuart Pearce cannot take charge of this particular game.

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My mate's been trying to get us tickets today but the site crashed and he had no luck.

 

I just kept refreshing the bastard, it took fucking ages. Tell him to stick at it.

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Guest Knightrider

Does anyone reckon there could be a full crowd for an under-21 match? Would be some turn out that, new wembley or no new wembley, must say it looks a fantastic stadium but unless the pl,ace gains a soul and an atmosphere, it will be no better than most modern stadiums, just bigger and more expensive. Daft location as well and how much? Lets hope we have better luck at this Wembley if we ever get there again, because we had none at the old one, we must have used it all up in the 50s.

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Does anyone reckon there could be a full crowd for an under-21 match? Would be some turn out that, new wembley or no new wembley, must say it looks a fantastic stadium but unless the pl,ace gains a soul and an atmosphere, it will be no better than most modern stadiums, just bigger and more expensive. Daft location as well and how much? Lets hope we have better luck at this Wembley if we ever get there again, because we had none at the old one, we must have used it all up in the 50s.

 

''He added the FA was confident it would sell-out the 60,000 tickets, an "unheard of" amount for an under-21 game.''

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I waited an hour in the queue after waiting 4 hours to get in the sodding queue! At the front i was asked if i had a username and password which i didnt have. I signed up went back and my queue position had expired. Queue has closed now :(

 

£800m on a new stadium and that still have a shit booking system in place!

 

 

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Wasn't there somethin a while back about Pearson leading the team out?

From nufc.com

 

News that the FA have formally taken over the new Wembley Stadium from the developers means that football matches can at last be played on that site after a seven year gap.

 

And with confirmation coming that the first major event there will be an U21 meeting between England and Italy on March 24th, Newcastle will be represented from the off.

 

With Stuart Pearce having relinquished U21 duties for the moment, current Newcastle assistant manager Nigel Pearson will instead be in charge of England for the game.

 

And England U21 regulars Steven Taylor and James Milner will expect to be part of the squad that faces an Italian side that may well include recent Magpie loanee Giuseppe Rossi.

 

A 60,000 ceiling on capacity for the game will apply, with tickets priced at just £10.

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http://www.football365.com/story/0,17033,8652_1978737,00.html

 

 

The first game at the new Wembley Stadium, England's Under-21 clash with Italy on March 24, will be played in front of a maximum crowd of 60,000 after the tickets sold out in less than six hours.

 

The Football Association's website crashed under the weight of demand as fans scrambled for tickets for the first game at the new £800million venue.

 

Tickets went on sale at 3pm but were snapped up quickly as fans made a bid to see the first game at the new venue.

 

And the FA have vowed to make improvements to their computer system after unprecedented numbers of people logged on to buy tickets.

 

The demand caused the queueing system on the FA's website to fail and a new system will be put in place ahead of ticket sales for future games.

 

A total of 154,102 visitors logged onto www.thefa.com on Monday - more than twice the average of 73,900 who accessed the site on the days of England's World Cup games last year - to snap up tickets.

 

The crowd will be a record for an England Under-21 game, easily beating the 34,000 who turned up at White Hart Lane for the France game in November 2005.

 

The crowd has been restricted from the full capacity of 90,000 to 60,000 as the game will be a second 'ramp-up' event at the new stadium in order to test facilities and obtain a general safety certificate from Brent council.

 

In addition to that, subject to fitness, Milner and Taylor should both feature, Pearson will be manager, and former loanee Rossi is also expected to play. Will be a great experience for all four, and they deserve it for the hard work they put in this season.

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Guest Nufc4Life

With all the problems this stadiums had, theres no way im going to attempt to go until at least 2 events have been held there, knwoing everyhting thats happened something will probably collapse.

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With all the problems this stadiums had, theres no way im going to attempt to go until at least 2 events have been held there, knwoing everyhting thats happened something will probably collapse.

 

DOOM MONGERER!

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