TOKYO, May 22: Japanese World Cup organisers were fuming on Wednesday as they tried to discover whether 150,000 missing tickets would arrive in time for the tournament.

Organisers (JAWOC) have set up an emergency department to deal with queries from worried fans and said they might even have to deliver the tickets by hand.

“We said from the start that we could reduce risks by managing the data and the ticket printing in Japan,” said Iwami Fukuda, a spokesman for JAWOC.

Of the tickets that have yet to be delivered, 20,000 are for first round matches.

Fukuda said JAWOC was not considering printing the tickets itself and that it was too early to think of claiming compensation from Byrom. JAWOC had originally promised fans the total of 1.35 million tickets would be delivered by mid-May.

But, according to reports from the Kyodo news agency in Japan, Byrom blamed the delays in printing on organisers from around the world being slow to provide data.—Reuters