An avid student of the game, in the 1950 FIFA World Cup Matthews stayed on to watch teams such as Brazil and Uruguay compete in the tournament after England's elimination – the English FA, manager and media all returned home to, as Matthews said, "bury their heads in the sand."[142] Matthews regularly condemned the "blazer brigade" at the FA in his autobiography, slating them as "conservative" and stressing that many of them were Old Etonians; in his view they treated players and supporters poorly, demonstrated arrogance by ignoring competitions they did not control (the World Cup and European domestic competitions), and viewed innovations with excessive suspicion (for example the FA sanctioned only the use of floodlights in 1952 despite artificial lighting having been experimented with as far back as 1878, and for years insisted on using outdated kit such as heavy "reinforced" boots).[143] Writing about the fact that the FA allocated only 12,000 of the 100,000 available tickets for the 1953 FA Cup Final to Blackpool supporters, Matthews wrote: "I couldn't make my mind up whether they were dunderheads or simply didn't care about the genuine supporters who were the lifeblood of the game".[144]