Some way more to a full house with only 20,000 tickets sold so far for 2nd leg semi-final against Vietnam in ASEAN Football Championship

By Les Tan

empty stadium

Despite having 28,000 fans at the game against Uzbekistan earlier this year in the World Cup qualifiers, it still wasn’t enough to cover ugly blank spaces like these. The National Stadium can seat 55,000. (Photo © Lai Jun Wei/Red Sports)

Saturday, December 20, 2008 – With ticket sales crossing the 20,000-mark only yesterday, the Football Association of Singapore made a last-minute decision to sell tickets today at the Jalan Besar Stadium, reversing an earlier decision not to.

Singapore host Vietnam this Sunday, December 21, 2008 in the second leg semi-final of the ASEAN Football Championship (AFF Suzuki Cup). The first leg in Hanoi earlier this week on Wednesday night ended in a 0-0 draw.

The cavernous 55,000-seater National Stadium can still look quite empty even with 30,000 people in the stadium, even if that number of fans for a single game would send most national sports associations in Singapore into raptures.

Singaporeans are also notoriously last-minute when it comes to buying tickets for football games, preferring to buy tickets at the stadium on game day. Some may argue that’s part of the fun.

In any case, some folks just don’t have the time to go down physically to Jalan Besar Stadium to buy tickets during the week and so opening up ticket sales today at Jalan Besar Stadium is a practical step for fans.

The last time Singapore hosted Vietnam in Singapore during the warm-up game at Jurong East, a vocal crowd of Vietnamese cheered so loudly that it felt a home game for their Vietnamese counterparts on the pitch. A strong contingent of Singapore-based Vietnamese will surely make their presence felt tomorrow at the National Stadium.

The Vietnamese media sent a total of 114 journalists for the group stage in Phuket, Thailand and given the importance of this game, a sizeable number are expected again.