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Ticket sales for the 2011 UEFA Champions League final – being played at Wembley Stadium in London on Saturday 28 May – will begin at 12.00CET on Thursday 24 February exclusively via UEFA.com.

The sales window will remain open between 24 February and Friday 18 March at 18.00CET, and is an opportunity for the international general public to apply for two tickets per person from an allocation of 11,000 for the showpiece match in the UK capital (20.45CET kick-off).

Sales will be conducted exclusively through Europe's football website, UEFA.com, with each applicant having to complete in full the online application form. Should demand exceed supply then every valid request will enter a lottery to decide the allocation.

Ticket price categories open to the international general public are: Category 1 – £300; Category 2 – £225 (or £338 for a youth package comprising one adult and one child); Category 3 – £150; and Wheelchair £80. A total of 500 youth package tickets are being allocated to neutral fans worldwide.

All valid general public applications will go into the lottery provided they are made within the application period. Each successful candidate will be eligible for a maximum of two tickets. With the submission of their request, the applicant accepts the ticketing Terms and Conditions.

The administrative fee will be £26 (including postal charges) for successful applicants inside Europe and £36 for the rest of the world. Payment will be by credit card only; MasterCard is the preferred payment system, with Diners, JCB and Visa also accepted.

Applicants will be informed by email by Wednesday 6 April at the latest if they have been successful or not, with tickets being dispatched before the end of April by secure mail. Candidates for tickets will be able to check the status of their applications from 6 April using their ticket portal log-in information.

The net capacity of Wembley Stadium for the UEFA Champions League final will be around 86,000. Each finalist club will be entitled to take up to 25,000 tickets, to be distributed directly to their fans.

The remaining tickets will be allocated to the European football family, including UEFA, the local organising committee, national associations, commercial partners and broadcasters.

Action will be taken in cases of infringement. Online applications will be checked against police data to ensure that anyone banned from stadiums is unsuccessful in any attempt to purchase tickets. Persons attending the final are warned that tickets will be personalised and that security checks at the stadium are planned.

UEFA underlines that no tickets are being distributed via agencies or brokers. UEFA also encourages fans not to be lured into deals with touts who not only demand exorbitant prices but often are not in possession of the tickets they purport to have for sale.

£150 for the cheap seats? With a £26 admin charge?! Not to mention in a stadium with a capacity of 86,000, they still only give each club 25,000 tickets with 11,000 on general sale which means about 25,000 tickets given away as freebies to their corporate partners.

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Flogging part of the corporate allocation for £150+ per ticket is little more than an admission that they can't get enough corporates to fill them. The club allocations there are the same as they always do for the FA Cup etc.

The BS that is Wembley ticketing will continue for at least a decade, if not forever. It's one major reason why I'd be disappointed to go to a CL final in Wembley as opposed to some other European city.

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Ticket price categories open to the international general public are: Category 1 – £300; Category 2 – £225 (or £338 for a youth package comprising one adult and one child); Category 3 – £150; and Wheelchair £80. A total of 500 youth package tickets are being allocated to neutral fans worldwide.

Does it specify whether you need to be disabled in order to purchase a wheelchair ticket?

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Just saw the interview with a UEFA spokesman on SSN, and I don't know whether its just that English is clearly his second language, but the phrase "Well, the ticket prices are the same as they were for last years.... but with a slight, moderate increase" didn't exactly fill me with love for the pricing policy. Oh well, I can only pray that on that fateful day in 37 years that Newcastle make it to the final (its happening, definitely) that its not held in our loser country.

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The category three tickets for Rome in 2009 were £80. That's an almost double increase (potentially more but I'm not sure about what the admin cost was back then) in the space of two years which is just crazy. Although, I remember reading in the Metro the other day that the most expensive tickets for the 2012 Olympics triple high jump final will be something like £450 so I can sort of see what they are saying about prices being reasonable in comparison to other big sporting events. Even still, its completely extortionate to charge those sort of prices for one game of football.

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Although, I remember reading in the Metro the other day that the most expensive tickets for the 2012 Olympics triple high jump final will be something like £450 so I can sort of see what they are saying about prices being reasonable in comparison to other big sporting events. Even still, its completely extortionate to charge those sort of prices for one game of football.

The comparisons I've read being made are the following:

Cheapest Champions League 2011 Final ticket: £150

Cheapest World Cup 2010 Final ticket: £106

Cheapest Wimbledon 2010 Men's Final Day (Centre Court) ticket: £104

Cheapest Olympics 2012 100m Sprint Final ticket: £100

This would suggest a 50% hike at the very least.

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Its the administration fee that annoys me too. Its the biggest kick in the teeth ever while booking gig tickets, and I'm just glad I don't have to pay one for football tickets, but £26? Bearing in mind I'm booking online so theres no one to pay, and even recorded delivery post (which it won't be) is only a couple of pounds, how can £26 be justified, other than as a stealth ticket price increase?

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Newcastle don't charge an admin fee at all. Whoop whoop!

Edit: Also that means one of my workmates kindly waived the admin fee when we went to the Bridge for the Carling Cup game, unless away fans don't have to pay it...

Edited by Colly
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Fifa has chosen Canada to host the women's World Cup in 2015.

Canada was the only candidate after Zimbabwe withdrew from the contest because of its lack of infrastructure.

Canada also will host the women's under-20 World Cup in 2014 as a test event.

Fifa also awarded hosting rights for the men's U20 World Cup to Turkey in 2013 and New Zealand in 2015.

The men's U17 World Cup will be staged in the United Arab Emirates in 2013 and Chile in 2015.

Uzbekistan was chosen by Fifa's executive committee to host the women's U20 World Cup in 2012.

Costa Rica will host the women's U17 World Cup in 2014.

MPH rejoices.

Fifa has confirmed that the six continents will each have the same number of qualifying places for the 2014 World Cup finals.

The only difference will be that an open draw will decide the play-off round, instead of the pre-arranged qualifications.

In qualifying for the 2010 games, South America's fifth-placed side, Uruguay, came up against the fourth-placed team from Concacaf, Costa Rica.

Concacaf appealed for a change in the system and this has now been agreed.

"Concacaf was not so eager to play again in a play-off with South America," Fifa president Sepp Blatter said.

"That's why it has been decided there shall be a draw."

The play-offs will now feature the fifth-placed team from South America, the fourth-placed side from North and Central America, the fifth-placed side from Asia and the winner of the Oceania qualification.

Elsewhere, Africa will have five qualifiers advancing to Brazil, while four South American teams are guaranteed to qualify in addition to the host - and possibly a sixth through the play-offs.

Europe keeps its 13-team allocation. Africa had six teams in 2010 as South Africa qualified as the host.

The announcement was made as Fifa's executive committee met for the first time this year in Zurich.

Fifa also revealed its latest financial report which confirmed over the last four years it has made a profit of £387million.

Although its director of finance, Markus Kattner, admitted that it was too reliant on profits from the World Cup.

"Fifa is financially strong and dependent on the World Cup," Kattner said.

"This illustrates the necessity for Fifa to build up and have sufficient reserves to decrease its dependency on the World Cup."

Fifa, which has also promised to introduce new rules to combat the growing worry of betting scams in the game, also took the opportunity to criticise the size of national leagues and club competitions.

European clubs and chiefs are unhappy with some aspects of the Fifa calendar and want talks and whilst that will happen Blatter insists there are too many club games too.

The 136 member European Club Association (ECA) last month sharply criticised the way world football's governing body has been handling changes in football, calling for "democracy and transparency" and more dialogue.

The ECA feels the international match calendar is adding to the physical exhaustion of players and disrupting club sides, with more call-ups for internationals and lengthier seasons mooted by footballing chiefs.

Blatter, though, warned: "If there is such a movement of the clubs to take over not only the international calendar, but also in all the organisation of football, then where are the national teams?"

"If you take away the importance of national teams then something is wrong."

Fifa also awarded hosting rights for the men's Under 20 World Cup to Turkey in 2013 and New Zealand in 2015.

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Canada was the only candidate after Zimbabwe withdrew from the contest because of its lack of infrastructure.

I love that they weren't turned down or disqualified, but withdrew.

A: "We'd like to put ourselves forward as potential hosts for this competition."

B: "I see. Do you have a good assortment of stadia, hotels, airports, and so on?"

A: "Er, will we need those?"

B: "Certainly."

A: "Oh. Well, um...good day then!"

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It's a shame as a Zimbabwean tournament would have rocked my socks.

Fifa has made a profit of £388m over the last four years but says it wants to decrease its financial reliance on World Cup tournaments.

World football's governing body said on Thursday that 87% of its revenue for 2006-10 came from the 2010 World Cup, including £1.4bn from TV rights.

Director of finance Markus Kattner said: "Fifa is financially strong.

"But it illustrates the necessity to build up reserves to decrease its dependency on the World Cup."

Fifa's financial report showed that profits from individual years grew steadily from £30m in 2007 to £124m in 2010. Its reserves have reached £786m.

This beat its original targets for the four-year period by £372m as sales of TV and marketing rights were better than expected, currency financial hedging was successful and Fifa was not adversely affected by the global financial crisis, the report said.

Meanwhile, Fifa has pledged to fund further experiments in goal-line technology.

The 10 companies who had presented systems to Fifa last month all failed to meet its criteria, raising fears that Saturday's meeting of the International Football Association Board, the game's law-making body, will not support further experiments.

But Fifa secretary general Jerome Valcke said in Zurich that the world governing body will support new tests.

Valcke said: "The decision is: do we extend the tests which we at Fifa are ready to do and ready to pay for? Maybe we will do the next tests in England and in a stadium.

"If something is working then why not? [FIFA president] Sepp Blatter was clear to the executive committee by saying if there is a system that's working we have to accept it."

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