"I can’t remember a World Cup attracting anything like this kind of demand in such a short space of time," said Urs Linsi, general secretary of world soccer’s governing body FIFA, on Friday.

"This impressive total underlines the extraordinary level of interest all over the globe. We’ve received applications from 195 different countries," said Linsi.

Still, about 80% of the applicants live in Europe, with 90% of these coming from Germany, hosts of the 64-match tournament.

Demand was said to be especially high for the opening match with Germany coach Juergen Klinsmann’s team on June 9, 2006, in Munich, the other two German group games as well as the semi-finals and the July 9, 2006, final in Berlin.

All ten million ticket applications received by the March 31 deadline have been entered into a match-by-match electronic draw to be made under the supervision of a notary public on April 15.

The lottery is expected to take more than 24 hours, with more than 1,000 draws for every ticketing category.

"Obviously, our priority is to guarantee every applicant has an equal chance of success," said Horst R. Schmidt, the organizing committee senior vice-president responsible for ticketing.

Fans who missed the first sales period need not despair, however. The first of four additional sales periods begins in May and runs to November, 2005.

During that period, organizers will offer only "team specific tickets" to follow a particular team from the group stage right up to the final.

Individual match tickets go back on sale in the third phase, provisionally set for December, 2005, to January, 2006.