Wembley match 'sold out' in hours
Tickets for the first competitive match at London's rebuilt Wembley stadium sold out within hours of going on sale, the Football Association said.
Demand for 60,000 £10 tickets for England's under-21s match against Italy was so great, the FA's website crashed around 1500 GMT when the sale began.
The 24 March match is a test event which is hoped will allow a safety certificate to be issued.
It would enable Wembley to stage May's FA Cup final before a 90,000 crowd.
An FA spokesman said tickets had been selling at the rate of 6,000 an hour and early problems with the website had been fixed.
The FA had been confident it would sell out the 60,000 tickets, an "unheard of" amount for an under-21 game, he added.
The 24 March game is one of two "ramp-up" events that will enable the £757m stadium to test its facilities and obtain a safety certificate from Brent Council.
The first "ramp-up" event, also with a 60,000 capacity, is a Community Day primarily for local Brent residents to visit and view the facility on 17 March.
Keys handover
If these events are a success they will pave the way for the FA Cup Final to be held there, with a full crowd capacity, on 19 May.
Construction firm Multiplex handed over the keys to the stadium to the FA on Friday, signalling an end to building work.
The project has been dogged by delays and increasing costs and will open more than a year late.
The old Wembley, which opened in 1924, closed in 2000 and was demolished in 2002.
FA chief executive Brian Barwick described the handover of the keys as a "significant step" towards staging the FA Cup Final.
The first concert scheduled for the revamped stadium is set to be by George Michael on 9 June.
