India create a new history in FIFA U17 World Cup

mali vs brazil 03
Full house at the Salt Lake Stadium during the third place match between Brazil and Mali. Image Source: XtraTime

Internet Desk: Host India created yet another new record today as the world saw the nation has registered the most attendance in the history of FIFA U17 World Cup in its 17th edition.

After the third-place encounter between city’s favourite Brazil and Mali, India has broken the record attendance of 1,230,976 which was set by another Asian country China back in 1985 during the tournament’s first edition.

A number of 56,432 spectators turned out at the Salt Lake stadium to watch the Brazil vs Mali game which take the total attendance of the tournament to 1280459.

Before the start of the game, the nation needed just 6949 spectators to break the old record.

The 2011 edition in Mexico had also attracted a total of 1,002,314 spectators, becoming the third one to have more than one million attendance.

The attendance for matches had breached the million mark in the last Round of 16 match on October 18.

In terms of the number of spectators per match, this edition is second behind the inaugural edition in China (which was 38,469) as the number of participating teams and matches were lesser at that time.

Sixteen teams competed till the 2005 edition in Peru (when the tournament was known as FIFA U-17 World Championships) before the number of participating countries was increased to 24 from the 2007 edition in South Korea. The number of matches was also increased from 32 to 52 from 2007 onwards.

Understandably, Kolkata’s Salt Lake Stadium has the highest attendance per match. The venue has so far logged a total of 542125 spectators from 10 games, at a staggering average of 54212 per match. The stadium has a total capacity of 66.600.