The venues may be state-of-the art but the ticketing policies for this World Cup have been creaking like a garden shed and have left thousands of supporters sweating to see if they will receive them in time.
In an attempt to circumvent the black market, Fifa chose to sell tickets on the internet and signed up a Manchester-based agency and printers to distribute the 3m available.
Not surprisingly perhaps, the 600,000 ear-marked for the corporate sponsors have all been delivered - but many of the rest have only just left the warehouse somewhere in the north-west of England.
The Japanese organising committee went into emergency session on Thursday to discuss the problems after it emerged 188,000 tickets have are still to be delivered there.
Of those tickets, 150,000 will be flown from Manchester over the next couple of days and will be despatched by express delivery service to reach fans by 25 May.
The chairman of the Fifa sub-committee dealing with tickets David Will hsaid on Friday that the ticketing operation were "back on track".
But it seems the possibility of fans arriving outside busy stadiums trying to pick-up their tickets cannot be ruled out just yet.
The tickets need to arrive in Japan by Friday to allow time for courier deliveries before the matches.
In the worst-case scenario, Jawoc may have to resort to on-the-spot handouts for about 20,000 tickets for matches to be played in early June, raising the spectre of a chaotic scramble.
"It is extremely unlikely tickets will have to be handed out on match day," Jed Holmes, director of marketing for the 2002 Fifa World Cup marketing bureau said.
Over 100,000 tickets are yet to be received here in
South Korea, but more suprising is the fact that 170,000 have not been sold at all.
Japan¿s stadiums have been fully subscribed since April but interest appears to be slower in South Korea.
That, of course, could have changed the moment Park Ji Sung¿s header hit the back of the England net in Seogwipo on Tuesday.
"That was a moral victory for my country," Lin Byung Taik from the Korean organising committee told BBC Sport Online.
"The enthusiasm has increased very quickly and the atmosphere generated in the stadium will stay with us for the rest of the World Cup which will have a direct baring on ticket sales."
"85 percent of the tickets have been sold but many Koreans will wait to see who makes progress into the latter stages before buying the others.
"I'm confident they will and we plan to sell unsold tickets on the spot."
That may be good news for the casual Korean supporter in the weeks to come but for their paid-up, internet-buying counterparts these are anxious and irritating times.
Have you got your tickets yet? If not, what's your plan of action in Korea and Japan?
Fan in Japan