US World Cup tickets allocated

The long day has come to an end and US soccer fans have found out if they got tickets or not. From talking with other fans, it seems that the earlier you got email, the less of a chance that you got tickets (I guess it was a work backwards approach). Also, the final emails seem to have been sent between 3-4am CST today (Sunday).

As for myself, I am very lucky. I was able to get tickets to the Italy and Ghana matches. I put in for any category tickets and was rewarded with cat 4 for both matches. Just incase you are wondering, I overnighted my application and it arrived a bit past 9am on Dec. 13th. I had tried to fax it in, but just like most folks, I had no luck with that.

I got my ticket notification email right before 4am this morning.

I am very grateful and overjoyed to get tickets. If you were waitlisted for tickets, you can still apply via FIFA, but you have to do so no later then 6pm EST today. Here is the link.

There is a little bit of good news about the FIFA phase three lottery, take a look at this statement from the ticket shop:

The chances of being allocated tickets are especially good for applications including the following matches: 14, 16, 18, 32, 36, 40, 42, 47 and 48.

Match 42 happens to be the US-Ghana match. Hopefully this will allow most folks to get tickets to at least one US World Cup outing.

As far as USSF's handling of the ticket allocation goes, I know I should not complain as I am one of the lucky ones to get tickets, but I do like to voice my mind. I think the whole process was poorly handled. I'm not sure what caused this (overwhelming demand or poor planning), but I hope they learn from it. The fact that they did a first come - first serve seems to be the root cause of the problem. When we could not get our faxes in on that first day, we became frustrated and angry thinking that we had lost our chance at tickets. When that is your starting point, it is hard to make things better.

I do not subscribe to any grand conspiracy theory, but I think the lack of constant communication from the USSF helped, in part, fuel these rumors. People like to know what is going on. If they had sent out a little more information, folks might still have been upset, but at least we would not feel forgotten about.

Anyway, I'm sure many others can make this point better then I can. Perhaps FIFA will notice the desire from Americans to make it to Germany and pass along some more tickets for our 'wait list' friends.

If anyone at USSF is reading this, I do want to thank you for the work you put in. I'm guessing this didn't go as you wanted it to either.