Local football fans in China and Hong Kong went frenetic early last week when a ticket website offering 2018 Russia World Cup and 2019 AFC Asian Cup qualifying games crashed, as the highly-anticipated Nov. 17 meeting of both national teams at the Mong Kok Stadium in Hong Kong approaches.

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Times Live reported that about 4,000 tickets were available for the China-Hong Kong encounter and it all "sold out" merely three hours of posting. It was also said that "hundreds of people queued at Mong Kok Stadium, but tickets had gone by mid-morning."

Internet buyers were frustrated that the sports booking website, Cityline, had become unavailable during the day as some believed that too many site visitors may have crashed its server.

Mark Sutcliffe, Hong Kong Football Association CEO, had voiced his concern about holding perhaps one of the country's biggest football games of the year in the 6,000-seater Mong Kok stadium instead of the much bigger 40,000-seater Hong Kong Stadium that could certainly accommodate more fans and produce greater gate earnings.

The report also mentioned a certain 69-year-old man named "Tsang", who said that he "felt like a fool for waiting so many hours" to have his ticket.

Meanwhile, another fan, 64-year-old "Chan", said that the fans are "all curious why there aren't many tickets" and controversially quizzed if "the government does not want Hong Kong people to watch it?"

The South China Morning Post indicated that the HKFA "confirmed on their Facebook page that all tickets had sold out" by noon of November 4 and that Cityline is still inaccessible for tickets, resulting in scorn from hometown fans.

Hong Kong fans have recent history regarding respect toward Chinese authorities as demonstrated by their persistent booing of the "March of the Volunteers" anthem, the national anthem of China, for every football game held by the national squad at the stadium.

Just recently, the HKFA was fined $5,100 by FIFA for the booing act done by the fans during the start of the Hong Kong vs Qatar game last Sept. 8, which the home team lost, 2-3.

TagsFootball News 2015, Hong Kong, China national football team, Hong Kong national football team, Hong Kong Football Association