Football’s world governing body Fifa is investigating why Egypt and Uruguay were playing in front of thousands of empty seats at their World Cup match in Ekaterinburg on Friday, Thai PBS reported.
There were rows of empty orange seats at the freshly rebuilt arena in the industrial city, situated in the Ural Mountains. The match ended with Uruguay’s 1-0 victory over Egypt.
The two soaring temporary seating sections at either end of the pitch appeared to be almost completely full, with one dominated by Egyptian fans and the other by the Uruguayans.
The seats are technically only supposed to be sold to Russian nationals.
Fifa said nearly all the available tickets had been sold and it was investigating why there were so many no-shows.
“We can confirm that 32,278 tickets have been allocated for the match between Egypt and Uruguay in Ekaterinburg. The Fifa World Cup stadium capacity is 33,061,” a Fifa spokesman told AFP.
