England to face Australia but less than 10% of the crowd is likely to be English

World Cup semi-final tickets intended for England fans and have been bought up by Australians after the unique supporter code was leaked on social media.

An official England supporters’ allocation of 1,970 tickets was released after the Lionesses’ 2-1 quarter-final victory over Colombia.

A post on the Football Association’s website said the access code ‘Lioness’ was exclusively for England fans. But several Australian supporters have managed to buy tickets in their opponents’ section of the stadium and bragged they would be ‘wearing Matildas’ shirts.

A facebook post on the Matildas and A-League Women Supporters Group page, which has since been removed, revealed the code fans needed to buy tickets.

One comment read: ‘The code was just meant to be for England supporters. Matildas fans were spreading the code last night and now they are all sold out for actual England supporters.’

Another user bragged: ‘Scored these English supporter tickets too last night. Proudly going to be wearing our Matildas gear.’

England fans, who were already going to be vastly outnumbered by Aussies, vented their frustration on social media.

One fan said: ‘I’m actually raging. I hope anyone that has a ticket in those sections gives them as much s*** as possible! So livid.’

It had been expected that there would be at least 8,000 England fans in attendance at Wednesday’s semi-final. But it is unclear whether that figure includes Australians who have managed to buy tickets in the England section.

The Football Association and FIFA have been approached for comment.