BBC Sport joined the queue for World Cup tickets alongside the supporters on Wednesday at about 15:20 BST.
A holding message was in place, and at 16:00 this changed to a red circle with the message: “Almost there…”
By 17:00 a countdown clock had appeared. We were two minutes from the front when the time suddenly jumped back up to 15 minutes.
When we did gain access, we experienced the same technical glitch as thousands of fans.
Supporters who logged on early were wrongly directed into a queue for “PMA tickets”, reserved for fans of this week’s play-off winners.
Once through, users were sent to a page where a code was required to open up a sale for those fixtures.
By the time the mistake was realised, those supporters were forced…