The tournament is going to be a sell-out...

By Peter Pedroncelli/Goal Dot Com

South African fans came out in numbers to purchase the tickets that were put on sale to the general public today, despite initial technical problems which affected all sales channels.

At 17:00 local time, close to 60,000 tickets had been sold, and were no longer available for several matches, including all three Bafana Bafana group stage matches and the final.

“We are very impressed by the enthusiasm shown today by all fans and especially those in South Africa towards the 2010 FIFA World Cup. We have seen a huge demand for tickets from the local fans, in the true spirit of this ‘football Friday’.

"We are very thankful for the patience shown by the fans and once again would like to apologise to all the fans that have been affected by the problems in the ticketing sales system today," said FIFA Secretary General Jerome Valcke in a statement.

The final ticket sales phase was marred by technical problems experienced by Match, FIFA's official ticketing partner, due to a huge demand from the host nation's local fans who flooded the system with requests, forcing it to crash on a number of occasions while eager fans waited in queues and tried to access the website without any lucky.

Despite this, 60,000 tickets were sold, and the tournament is likely to be a sell-out soon after the last of the tickets were made available today.