Taking Deutschland By Storm
Yeeee-haaaaaw! The World Cup is in Germany next year, and my brother and I are planning a month-long adventure in Germany to watch it. We applied for tickets in the first ticket phase, but didn't get any tickets. The second ticket phase was for "follow your team" tickets. The gist of this is that you pick a team that you want to watch in the World Cup, pay the money for the tickets, and hope your team qualifies for the World Cup. Also, you can choose how many games you would like to follow that team. First, each team that qualifies automatically is placed in a 4-team group in which they play each of the other teams in the group. So, just for qualifying for the World Cup, every team is guaranteed at least 3 games. The top 2 teams from each group then advance to a win and advance, lose and go home elimination-type tournament culminating in the world's most-watched event...THE FINAL. For the "follow your team" package, you could choose to get the TST-3 package that allows you to watch all the group phase games, or you could choose TST-5 package that allows you to watch the three group phase matches as well as 2 of the playoff-style matches. Finally, you could pick the TST-7 package that guarantees you tickets to watch every match for your team, including THE FINAL. However, if the team you picked does not make it out of the group phase, you still have tickets to the remainder of the games you chose, but now the team you follow is the winner of the group. This is a great option, because even if your team doesn't make it out of the group, you will be following a very strong team, and if they get beat in the playoff, you get to follow the team that beat them. Simple enough...the trick is to make sure that the team you choose even qualifies!
During the second phase, we wanted to get the "follow your team" tickets to follow the US, but they were all sold out in the first phase, along with any other team that was pretty much a guarantee to make it to the World Cup. A couple of months ago, FIFA re-released about 40,000 tickets that people bought in the first phase but didn't pay for. This was quite a hectic day because they didn't release them all at the same time. Instead, it was a slow trickle of releasing tickets for different countries at different times. So the FIFA website was changing every second on what tickets were available. Because we didn't know this until after we applied for tickets, we tried to choose a team that we would like to see that also had a strong probability of making it to the World Cup. We settled on Ireland because...well, the Irish know how to have fun! Come to find out later, if we would have waited around a bit more, we could have gotten USA tickets. Oh well. I also applied for tickets later in the day for the Czech Republic. I know alot of their players because they mostly play in the EPL, which I watch every weekend. As it turns out, Ireland didn't qualify, so we are without those tickets...but TODAY, the Czech Republic booked their place in the World Cup! We now have tickets to watch the Czechs play 5 matches if they make it that far (or whatever team makes it from their group). I'm pretty excited, because in a couple of weeks, FIFA will have the drawing to see what teams are in what groups. I only hope that the Czechs get drawn into the same group as Brazil...it would be a dream to get to watch the Brazilians live.
Anyway, look out Deutschland, here we come!
Cheers,
Rocco
During the second phase, we wanted to get the "follow your team" tickets to follow the US, but they were all sold out in the first phase, along with any other team that was pretty much a guarantee to make it to the World Cup. A couple of months ago, FIFA re-released about 40,000 tickets that people bought in the first phase but didn't pay for. This was quite a hectic day because they didn't release them all at the same time. Instead, it was a slow trickle of releasing tickets for different countries at different times. So the FIFA website was changing every second on what tickets were available. Because we didn't know this until after we applied for tickets, we tried to choose a team that we would like to see that also had a strong probability of making it to the World Cup. We settled on Ireland because...well, the Irish know how to have fun! Come to find out later, if we would have waited around a bit more, we could have gotten USA tickets. Oh well. I also applied for tickets later in the day for the Czech Republic. I know alot of their players because they mostly play in the EPL, which I watch every weekend. As it turns out, Ireland didn't qualify, so we are without those tickets...but TODAY, the Czech Republic booked their place in the World Cup! We now have tickets to watch the Czechs play 5 matches if they make it that far (or whatever team makes it from their group). I'm pretty excited, because in a couple of weeks, FIFA will have the drawing to see what teams are in what groups. I only hope that the Czechs get drawn into the same group as Brazil...it would be a dream to get to watch the Brazilians live.
Anyway, look out Deutschland, here we come!
Cheers,
Rocco
posted by Rocco @ 4:48 PM
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