Wales-England Set for First Stadium Sell-Out for 5 Years

Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium is set for a sell-out attendance for the first time in five-and-a-half years in national soccer team manager, Gary Speed’s first home game in charge against England on Saturday, March 26.

The Euro 2012 qualifier is on track to sell the 69,000 tickets available for the event after the Football Association of Wales (FAW) announced that the game was already close to capacity.

The FAW released a statement, reading: “Due to overwhelming demand we are now in a position to suspend ticket sales for the time being.”

Jonathan Ford, FAW chief executive, confirmed the majority of tickets had gone to Welsh fans, adding: “I’m really delighted to say: six weeks to go and we have sold out the Millennium Stadium.”

In the interview with BBC Wales, Ford continued: “We have an allocation to the English – 10% [of the tickets] go to the FA, but the rest we had to sell to local people. We weren’t able to go out on a local sale so we had to go direct to the [Welsh] clubs.”

That ticket initiative ensured Welsh clubs could effectively keep 25% from the ticket sales. It also ensured tickets would not fall go to England beyond the allocation to the FA.

Wales’ last Millennium Stadium full house was a 0-1 defeat to England in September 2005 when Joe Cole scored the winner in a 2006 World Cup qualifier in front of 70,715 fans in Europe’s 12th-biggest sporting arena.