TOKYO, June 2 (News Agencies) - Japan's organizing committee for the World Cup (JAWOC) on Sunday, June 2, blamed FIFA for thousands of empty seats for early matches in Japan, while fans fumed at the internet ticketing system.

Some 19,000 seats in total were vacant at the Ireland-Cameroon and Germany-Saudi Arabia matches on the first day of World Cup action in Japan, the Yomiuri Shimbun and Jiji Press news agency reported.

“We were told that the unsold overseas tickets would be sent to us for sale in Japan, so we regret that they were not,” JAWOC spokeswoman Yukiko Koike said.

When asked if the unsold tickets caused the great gaps in attendance, Koike said: “It is a possibility.”

Even World Cup favorite Argentina and David Beckham-led England did not play to packed houses Sunday.

In Saitama, near Tokyo, where England battled Sweden Sunday night, 52,721 fans were in attendance 30 minutes after kickoff, some 10,000 seats short of its 63,000 capacity, local government officials said.

In Argentina's 1-0 win against Nigeria in Kashima, Ibaraki prefecture, some 100 kilometers northeast of Tokyo, only an estimated 34,050 fans arrived, compared to the stadium's 41,800 capacity.

“We were surprised. It's not the figure we thought it would be,” an Ibaraki official told AFP.

While FIFA has attempted to respond to the shortfall with ticket sales through their Internet site, enraged fans said the system was permanently jammed.

“I think it's a complete shambles,” said Neil Rowe, a 27-year-old pilot from England, outside the stadium in Saitama, some 50 kilometers northwest of Tokyo.

He had finally managed to get tickets for Sunday's England-Sweden match.

“We spent three days trying to get through (to the FIFA website) and it kept on crashing,” Rowe said.

The fiasco follows the late printing of a batch of tickets by British-based company Byrom that left some overseas fans without tickets.

FIFA spokesman Andreas Herren said all late ticket deliveries had been rectified smoothly and that unsold tickets have come mainly from returns from overseas football associations and sponsors who did not use them.

He said that those tickets have been put up for resale on FIFA's website, which has so far sold 15,000 for Japan venues.

“Some of the seats in Sapporo (Germany-Saudi Arabia) have not been sold at all because of the unfavorable sight-lines,” he added.

“Seats that are not up to scratch should not go on sale,” Herren said.

But the front-page of the Yomiuri newspaper showed around one hundred empty prime front-section seats in the Sapporo Dome.

“There may be some tickets which indeed have not been sold and could not be put on resale on time. It's entirely possible,” Herren admitted, adding traffic on its Internet site was “heavy.”

He denied, however, that 19,000 seats went empty on Saturday, Japan's first day of hosting matches.

“Our understanding is it's less than those figures,” he said. Herren estimated that only 500 or so seats would not be filled for the England-Sweden game.

Fans were enraged at what they saw as flaws in the ticketing system.

Junji Yoichi, a 36-year-old Japanese fan, said his group of four friends were forced to split up outside the England-Sweden match in Saitama.

“We all tried again and again to get through on the website but it kept timing out,” he said. “Only one of us got tickets. We wanted to go to other games but we couldn't get through.”

Japanese police were meanwhile cracking down on ticket touts.

In the northern city of Sapporo, which hosted Germany's 8-0 rout of Saudi Arabia on Saturday, a 56-year-old German man and a 53-year-old Japanese woman were arrested for allegedly selling tickets, police said.

The couple was caught selling two tickets for 8,000 yen (64 dollars) each to a male and female resident of Sapporo, police said.