FIFA are to arrange a crisis meeting in the next 24 hours in a bid to solve the ticketing problems.

World Cup organisers may give away free tickets to groups of schoolchildren or young footballers to avoid the spectacle of thousands of empty seats at matches.

As FIFA struggles to come to grips with ticketing problems at the tournament, organisers have been embarrassed by television pictures showing some stadiums little more than half-full.

Although many of the empty seats in the stadium are due to poor ticket sales on the international market, another problem is that the FIFA website where tickets can be bought has been overwhelmed by hits and continually crashes.

In addition, there are no ticketing centres in the Japanese cities of Sapporo and Ibaraki, so anyone living would have to travel to another city to pick up their tickets, diminishing local appeal to attend games.