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England fans to outnumber hosts
| quote: | From correspondents in Lisbon
June 24, 2004
ENGLAND fans have acquired more tickets than hosts Portugal for tomorrow's (AEST) Euro 2004 quarter-final.
"The English have snapped up most of the tickets for the game," sports daily A Bola quoted "official sources" as saying, adding many England supporters, with more purchasing power than their hosts, have trawled the internet to bag any ticket still going for the sellout meeting.
A Bola suggested some of the tickets have come from fans of Spain, who Portugal knocked out of the event and who had bought their own allocation hoping their team would make it to the last eight.
Portugal's Brazilian coach, Luiz Felipe Scolari, said he is not worried that fans of his team are likely to be out-shouted by their rivals.
"I would have hoped for the stadium to be 60 per cent full of Portuguese people.
"But even if we only have one fan in the stands up against 64,999 English I would still call on him to back us with all his heart and soul and outshout them."
The level of interest in the match has been such that a massive queue formed early om Tuesday afternoon outside the Portuguese football federation for the last 500 tickets officially available, and by today the line of those who had endured an overnight vigil had stretched to some 200m long.
It has echoes of last year's rugby World Cup, where England fans appeared to even outnumber Australians at the final in Sydney.
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 Unbelievable.
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"Burn down the disco, hang the blessed dj, because the music that they constantly play,
it says nothing to me about my life..." The Smiths - 'Panic'
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