The FIFA World Cup Organising Committee has confirmed that FIFA will not request the law-making International Football Association Board to allow interruptions in matches of this year’s World Cup in Korea and Japan to allow players to drink more water.
The Committee felt that in view of the temperatures in the two host countries in June (averages are in the low to mid-20s), the current system of allowing players to drink during normal stoppages in play was adequate, especially if referees were more flexible in their application of the system.
Other decisions by the Committee under the chairmanship of Lennart Johansson (Sweden) included:
Teams will only have to submit one list of players before the competition, containing the final list of 23 players and due by 21 May; a list of 35 names, previously due on 30 April, has been scrapped.
Training sessions during the World Cup finals will be open to all accredited media for at least the first 15 minutes, after which the team can either require the media to depart or allow them to stay; one training session per match will be completely closed The public will not be allowed to attend any training session, for organisational and security reasons.
Giant screens in the World Cup stadiums may be used for showing live real-time pictures of the match in the same stadium, but without any replays of any scenes whatsoever.
The number of accreditations per team was raised from 45 to 50, the extra five persons being at the team’s own cost.
The Committee stressed that offers appearing in the press of World Cup tickets for sale, usually at black-market prices, are to be totally ignored as tickets have not yet been printed and the FIFA World Cup system rules out the possibility of tickets being offered by private individuals or non-authorised organisations other than the official channels.
Ticket sales continue to go well; Japan has sold out its allocation, and Korean domestic sales are also accelerating; the participating teams have taken up 60 per-cent of their allocation, the remainder being now offered to the other teams first before going on official general sale.
For further information please contact:
Fifa
Andreas Herren
Tel: +41 1 254 9725
Fax: +41 1 384 9696