Finals tickets remain on sale

World Cup briefs Fifa say more than 160,000 World Cup tickets are still unsold with the tournament kick-off just two weeks away.

Fifa say more than 160,000 World Cup tickets are still unsold with the tournament kick-off just two weeks away. None of the 64 games are sold out after Fifa released an extra 90,000 tickets - which were not wanted by sponsors and affiliates. The category one tickets, which range from US$160 (Dh587) to $900, appear to be causing problems. More than 75,000 category one tickets, unaffordable for the majority of South Africans, are still available.

Albert Bunjaku has been drafted into Switzerland's squad to replace Marco Streller, the injured forward. Ottmar Hitzfeld, the Switzerland coach, opted yesterday to add the 26-year-old Bunjaku from his list of players on standby instead of Nassim Ben Khalifa,the uncapped 18-year-old. Bunjaku scored 12 goals in the Bundesliga for FC Nuremberg this season, and made the first of his two international appearances last November.

Orlando Engelaar was one of four players to miss out as Bert van Marwijk made the final cut to his 23-man Holland squad yesterday. Vurnon Anita, Ron Vlaar and Jeremain Lens will also not travel to South Africa.Engelaar, the PSV Eindhoven midfielder, was the only player of that quartet to have played for Holland at a major tournament, having started all four matches of their run to the quarter-finals at Euro 2008. Holland are in Group E.

Fernando Torres took another step forward in his recovery from knee surgery when he trained with the rest of the Spain squad for the first time yesterday. The Liverpool frontman joined his teammates on the pitches at their camp just outside Madrid on their last day before flying off to Austria for the next stage in their preparations for South Africa. "He's an important players for us," Gerard Pique, the defender, said at a news conference.

Michael Essien has been ruled out of the finals after failing to recover from a knee injury, Ghana's FA said yesterday. "An evaluation by a combined team of medical experts from the Ghana Football Association and Chelsea Football Club revealed that Essien will not make [a] full recovery until the end of July," Ghana's FA said on www.ghanafa.org. The Chelsea midfielder has been recovering from a knee injury picked up at the African Nations Cup.