Over 230,000 flock to buy tickets to football match with Iran

Seoul World Cup Stadium will be covered with the deep reddish waves of South Korean football fans in almost three years.

　

As of 3 p.m. on Thursday, the Korea Football Association sold 55,000 out of 65,000 tickets to the final qualifying round with Iran scheduled one week later in Seoul World Cup Stadium for the 2022 Qatar World Cup. The remainder of tickets amount to 10,000 or so, all of which are 2nd and 3rd class seats. They may be sold out before the match starts.

Signs of such a high popularity among football fans were already shown from the start of ticketing. As soon as the Korea Football Association began selling tickets on its new marketing platform KFA at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, as many as 230,000 fans rushed onto the website to grab tickets but only broke down its servers. As complaints poured out from ticket hunters who tried to access the website, the KFA issued an apologetic statement to calm them down.

The last time when Seoul World Cup Stadium accommodated more than 60,000 audiences was back in June 11, 2019 when the South Korean football team had a friendly match with Iran that finished a tie of one to one with 60,213 audiences at the stand. South Korea will fight against the same competitor in the same venue as three years ago with the largest audience since the COVID-19 outbreak. The final qualifying round against Iraq for Qatar was held last September and tied with no goal scored on any side.

　

Already gaining a ticket to the World Cup finals tournament for 10 events running, South Korea may likely top Group A if it beats up Iran. However, Team Korea is inferior to Iran with a head-to-head record of nine wins, 10 ties and 13 losses. As it has not won any of seven games held against Iran since the quarterfinal round of the Asian Football Confederation Asian Cup (1-0) with a record of three ties and four losses, South Korean football fans are excited to figure out if the nation can break the jinx of Iran.


Dong-Wook Kim creating@donga.com