Ticket sales for the 2007 FIFA U-20 World Cup in Canada have surpassed the one-million mark, tournament organizers revealed Tuesday.

"What we are seeing here is beyond our wildest expectations," FIFA vice-president Jack Warner said in a statement.

Portugal's Bruno Gama is just one of the big stars competing in the FIFA U-20 World this summer in Canada.
(Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

The tournament opened with sellouts in Montreal and Ottawa on Saturday, followed by sellouts in Burnaby, B.C., Victoria and Toronto on Sunday.

Organizers say more than 200,000 fans attended the first nine matches of the 52-game tournament.

The 1983 tournament in Mexico set the competition's all-time attendance record with 1.15 million fans passing through the turnstiles. The maximum number of tickets available for this summer's tournament in Canada is 1.3 million.

The 2005 competition in the Netherlands sold 502,698 tickets.

"Hosting such a prestigious event presents a wonderful opportunity to promote soccer across the country," said Colin Linford, chairman of the National Organising Committee for the FIFA U-20 World Cup.

"It also presents a wonderful opportunity to promote our country to the world. Over the next three weeks, the FIFA U-20 World Cup will make its mark in Canada and will create a lasting legacy for soccer and sport in our country."

Strong tickets sales and a successfully run tournament could help Canada secure hosting duties for other FIFA events in the future. The Canadian Soccer Association publicly stated that it wants to stage the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup in Canada.

"FIFA can see how well this tournament is doing. They're delighted with the way things are going and in the future if any tournaments have a chance of coming back to Canada, we can go to them and say how well we ran the U-20 tournament," soccer commentator Craig Forrest told CBCSports.ca

"I'm confident, for my money, this will be the most successful U-20 World Cup ever."