England’s women’s international against Germany at Wembley will be watched by a record crowd of 55,000 but the Football Association has announced no more tickets will be sold.

The FA was targeting an attendance of around 30,000 and the signs are that many more than 55,000 tickets would have been bought for the friendly on 23 November, which marks England Women’s first match at the rebuilt Wembley. But with local engineering works due to be taking place that will affect transport, it was decided sales should be stopped immediately after a surge of bookings.

The FA said in a statement on Thursday: “As a result of longstanding planned engineering works taking place on the day of the game, impacting transport options, we have sought ongoing advice on crowd numbers and have taken the decision to cap ticket sales at the current number.”

More than 20,000 tickets have been sold in the past 10 days for the match against the European champions, which forms part of England’s preparations next summer’s World Cup. The FA defended its move to take tickets off sale.

“To have achieved ticket sales of 55,000 shows just how big an audience there is for women’s football and what a landmark occasion it will be for the women’s game,” it said. “There were limited options in the calendar for this fixture and the date remains the best opportunity to play world-class opposition at Wembley Stadium despite the restrictions.”

The FA added: “We apologise to anyone who will be disappointed by this announcement, but taking into account previous similar experiences such as the England-Andorra fixture in 2009, where a crowd of 58,000 were present, we believe this to be a sensible decision based on the latest travel advice.”

Great Britain’s women Olympic Games team were watched by 70,584 as they beat Brazil 1-0 at Wembley during London 2012.

The largest crowd to have attended a home England women’s international was the 29,092 that witnessed victory over Finland at the Etihad Stadium during Euro 2005. England’s men were watched by 40,181 at Wembley for September’s friendly against Norway.

England will face Italy, Portugal and Sweden in Group B of next summer’s eight-team European Under-21 Championship finals in the Czech Republic.