5 Reasons Why South Africa Hosting the 2010 World Cup Will be a Resounding Success:
Atmosphere:
Whether you like vuvuzelas or not, there has never been a country more excited or deserving to host the World Cup and this tournament will be uniquely African. In South Africa they don’t refer to it as the World Cup, simply “2010” because that is the only thing of importance happening this year!
South Africa deserves to host and contrary to the speculative reports coming out of Europe for the past four years regarding stadiums, safety and tickets, all of these fears have been eased. Get ready for one of the great World Cups of all time, just make sure you have your earplugs!
Bafana Bafana:
South Africa should steal the USMNT’s slogan here and change it to read “Don’t tread lightly on us”. Watch out for the Boys, you simply cannot understand how much this World Cup means to South Africa and we all know in sport the home crowd can do amazing things. Just look at South Korea and Japan in 2002. While the soccer world expects them to fail, enjoy watching them pleasantly surprise.
Disregard everything you saw in their friendlies, remember this South Africa team pushed Brazil all the way in the Confederations Cup semifinal and is much improved since then, with their old boss back in charge. Look for South Africa to push the other three teams all the way and sneaking out of their group is certainly within their realm.
Weather:
Everyone tends to agree that an athlete’s body reacts much better in 70 degree weather than 100 degree weather. A South African winter will ensure that temperatures are much lower than previous tournaments, with temperatures getting a bit chilly during the night matches. While the spectators might not enjoy the cold weather, the players certainly will.
Pre-tournament talk amongst the managers has reveled that most of them expect a much higher tempo World Cup as a result of the cooler weather. This can only mean good things for the fans of the beautiful game!
Stadiums:
Ever been in a zebra patterned stadium? What about one shaped as a calabash? What about a match with Table Mountain rising above the stadium? I didn’t think so.
South Africa has produced 6 brand new stadiums of stunning quality, in addition to the 4 that already existed, which will visually create one of the most visually appealing backdrops we have ever seen in a World Cup.
Soweto:
Bringing the World Cup Final to the township where it all began for South Africa is so symbolic and a moment of such pride for South Africa.
Soccer was used as a movement of resistance during apartheid and a means of unification during the Mandela era. Soweto has always been the heart of South African soccer and there really was no other place the final could end up.
No comments:
Post a Comment