Twenty Bucks... Not Including the $3000 Air Fare

Tickets for the World Cup go on sale tomorrow. Woo hoo!

We're totally getting in line and camping out. We're rock and roll that way.

But the 2010 World Cup does pose and interesting question: How do you buy a ticket for a seat that doesn't exist?

Answer: You don't. The ticket sales just make it more of a clusterf*ck when FIFA has to take the Cup away from South Africa.

Because not only are stadiums behind schedule, but workers are on strike. They have been since February 6th (Really, how'd we miss that?): "About 400 of the [1000] construction workers at Mbombela stadium, most of them members of the National Union of Mine Workers (NUM), who have been on illegal strike were sacked on Tuesday,"

Good, fire 40% of the workforce. That'll totally accelerate the construction.

Actually we hope that South Africa pulls this off. Okay, we secretly hope that they fail and it gets scuttled to over in the States but, short of that, we still would rather see South Africa host a nice party than this become a disaster, political or otherwise.

The good news is that some of the tickets are cheap (as low as $20).

The bad news is that you don't actually purchase tickets tomorrow. Phase one (of four) starts tomorrow, where you simply apply on line for a lottery to buy.

* There are three types of sales phases: random selection (phases one and three), first-come-first-served basis (phases two and four) and a last-minute sales phase
* The first phase closes on April 15 after which applicants will be told whether or not they have succeeded in their bid to buy tickets. The second phase is from May 4-Nov. 16, the third is from Dec. 5 until Jan. 22, 2010, the fourth is from Feb. 9 to April 7 and the last one starts on April 15, 2010, when FIFA still expects tickets to be returned to the pool.

So curb your enthusiasm. For Germany, I roped about 15 people into applying on my behalf (if I recall correctly, it was unnecessarily cumbersome, right down to needing a passport number), and not a single one of the lot had won the right to actually purchase tickets. That really confirmed my suspicions that everything FIFA does it totally and 100% above board.

Of course my friend who works for a sponsor called me after the fact and said, "Oh we had all kinds of extra tickets for the semi." That being the Germany v. Italy semifinal match. Or as I like to call it now, "The greatest soccer game that I could have attended if I had more thoughtful friends." Sorry, where was I...?

Oh yeah, tickets, stadium construction issues, FIFA is corrupt, etc.