THOUSANDS of England football supporters are facing the prospect of flying to Japan next month without the World Cup tickets they have paid for.

And last night a bitter dispute broke out over who was to blame for the fact the fans may have to make the 6,000-mile journey with only the hope that their tickets will be ready for collection when they get there.

The Football Association admitted that 9,000 tickets allocated to official supporters had not arrived at its headquarters because of a “major administrative breakdown”. Most other European football associations are also still waiting for their tickets, raising the spectre of chaotic scenes when the fans arrive in Japan.

There has been no delay in distributing more than 600,000 tickets destined for the competition’s multibillion-pound corporate sponsors, nor with the 200,000 tickets allocated to Fifa officials.

The FA last night blamed the delay on the Cheshire-based Byrom plc, which has exclusive rights to supply tickets for the tournament. But the company, run by the Mexican brothers Jaime and Enrique Byrom, said the FA was at fault.

Fans who applied and paid directly to Byroms through its Fifa website a year ago are also still without their tickets, although they had been promised they would arrive at least six weeks before the start of the tournament.

Nick Barron, an FA spokesman, said the association’s switchboard had been inundated with calls from hundreds of irate fans in recent days. “We know how worried the fans can get and they are potentially going to face an anxious flight to Japan without their tickets in their hands. It’s not an ideal situation and the later it gets, the more stressed out people are becoming,” he said. Byrom plc, which employs 100 people worldwide, operates the World Cup Ticketing Bureau and is responsible for printing and distributing all 3.2 million tickets for the tournament. The brothers, who were awarded the World Cup contract without it going to tender, also act as transport and accommodation agents for golf’s Ryder Cup.

The brothers also set up a joint venture with Sir Bobby Charlton to sell tickets and trips to the 1986 and 1990 World Cup finals, but all three lost tens of thousands of pounds and Sir Bobby has severed all ties with the brothers.

A spokesman for Byrom said last night that only a few thousand of more than a million tickets had still to be distributed.

“It was going to be our best endeavour to get them out six weeks beforehand. The vast majority have now gone out, but there are a few thousand still in the system and we expect the last of these to be sent out by Tuesday of next week,” its spokesman, Gerald Holmes, said. He insisted that there was “no major crisis” but admitted that the company had experienced problems with the bulk allocations for many national football associations, including the FA.

He said Byrom was unable to produce and process the tickets until it received details of the name, address and passport number of each successful applicant. Names are printed on each ticket for security reasons.

Mr Holmes said that each national association knew long ago that it must supply these details by the end of March, but claimed that Byrom had not received the England supporters’ information from the FA until last week. “We’re turning the tickets around for all of the national associations within a week, but it all depends on when we receive the details.”