Lessons were clearly learned from the first game that Rio hosted on Sunday, which bodes well for FIFA as an organization but asks questions again as to how prepared anyone actually was for this World Cup.

A second visit to the Maracana saw many changes and not just from the Spain side that had struggled so visibly in their opening game against the Netherlands. Reports that the huge Argentine crowds in Rio had forced down the fences surrounding the stadium in order to watch the match, guns being pulled by protesters around the stadium and violence in the crowd between locals and Argentina supporters, meant that the military police were out in force.

Regardless, reports late Wednesday suggested that in spite of this increased deployment, over 100 Chilean fans breached the media center and gained ­access to the ground before being apprehended without making it to the stadium proper.

The extra police presence manifested as more ticket checks starting from much further out than Sunday. By the time fans reached the fringes of the stadium, tickets had been checked on four separate occasions by the riot-ready Policia Militar. This time round the special forces police were also inside the grounds of the Maracana, alongside being on the concourse of each level of the stadium itself.

Getting into the Maracana had become more of a rigmarole than Sunday's game. Despite ­arriving more than an hour early to Gate F, there was a ­bigger line than Bosnia-Herzegovina vs. ­Argentina on Sunday night.

The main reason was that the Maracana had imposed a new security process in addition to the extra military police in the form of magnetic scanners alongside their existent metal detectors. Fair enough, you might think, but the ­enforcement of the policy was inconsistent at best. The Spain fans I was with carried in a sack of ­whiskey, contrary to the no food and drink regulations that FIFA's sponsors are no doubt so keen to impose.

Lines to reach the stands themselves were even more hair-raising. Gate F is at the very far end of the Maracana, as determined by FIFA. Access involves walking around the corner of the commercial zone and into a funnel of bodies that heaves and pushes to reach a cordoned path to the turnstiles. Today was a reasonably well-tempered affair but comments were raised by fans from across the world as to the horrors that might happen on a different day. It ­really does seem naive in the extreme to allow such a plan for the movement of a crowd after all that has been learned about safe standing over the last three decades.

Another thing that was different to the Maracana's opening game was the fact that they now had food. Admittedly, the cooked food now seemed to start and stop at vacuum-packed hot dogs, even though the menus continued to advertise such ­delicious American fan-friendly fare as double cheeseburgers.

Credit to the organizers for managing to maintain the confusion as to how to pay for anything. Each cashier still clearly stated that they were "only accepting VISA" but they all took cash, with the obvious exception of the one that actually only ­accepted VISA but was marked in exactly the same way as the others.

Kinks remain at the World Cup's showpiece ­venue, as Chilean fans exploiting yet another security weakness and the accidents waiting to ­happen at Gate F would suggest. This World Cup has so far been a triumph on the pitch and it will be a shame if things at the Maracana are not rectified before the final on July 13.