Should the US Really Try to Host Another World Cup? – 29/07/2010
Stephen Dubner, The New York Times: There is a good section in the book Soccernomics about the economic impact studies that cities and countries sponsor when they are hoping to host a huge sporting event like the World Cup or the Olympics. The gist of it is that you can make an economic impact study say pretty much whatever you want, since it’s an exercise in speculation, and that the economists hired by bid committees make sure the numbers say yes. The truth, however, is that most such events don’t provide much economic stimulus, and often turn out to be money losers.
Craig Arendse, Cape Argus: If national pride is measured in flag visibility, South Africa has surely blasted off the scales of the national pride barometer. The 2010 World Cup has been nothing less than a momentous success, and while some are concerned that the current groundswell of patriotism will fizzle out into a listless hangover now that the tournament is over, there is much hope that the country, organisations and businesses can continue to leverage off it for years to come. After all, times when whole populations - especially those as diverse as ours - come together in a true show of national unity are rare. They are to be savoured and celebrated, but more importantly, to be learnt from.
Khaya Dlanga, News24: What a royal disappointment you lot are. Who the hell do you think you are to host a successful World Cup? I don’t know why you are busy patting yourselves in the back and walking around with your chests out. You were supposed to fail and you didn’t. When it comes to being a failure, you failed. What you did during the World Cup was under-whelming. You were meant to make the most embarrassing spectacle of yourselves, but oh no, not you, you decided you were above that. What were you thinking?
Gavin Hunt, IoL: Well it’s all over and done with now, but let’s reflect on the last four games. I was very disappointed with the Germans in the semifinal game. I really thought they might have had the beating of the Spanish team, but a big blow for the Germans was the loss of Thomas Mueller. He gave them the penetration, creativity and goals that they lacked in that game. I certainly felt that the central midfield of Germany, who had dominated most of their previous games, were outplayed in that semifinal clash.
John Carlin, Saturday Star: It’s been a spectacular success. Everything according to plan, smooth as silk; South Africa successfully re-branded; no unpleasant surprises, and plenty of pleasant ones. Not a cheep, for example, out of the ludicrous Julius Malema, who the ANC wisely locked up in the attic, as you do with the mad live-in relative when important guests come around. No reports of any new Zuma off-spring, or even wife. As for the bigger and far more important picture, the games all started on time and were broadcast live around the world without a hitch (though I gather there were some power-cut problems in England ’mercifully, perhaps’ during one of their national team’s relentlessly hapless displays). No massacres of foreign visitors, either, as long advertised in the foreign press. Crime generally seems to have sunk to Swiss levels of innocuousness during South Africa’s four-week World Cup honeymoon.
Mark Gleeson, Mail & Guardian: The chaotic end to Friday’s game at Soccer City will go down in the legend of the tournament - both the handball on the line, almost a volleyball-style scoop to stop the ball entering the goal, and then the fact that Asamoah Gyan missed the kick. A Ghana-Holland semifinal would have had the Mother City buzzing, although the orange-clad Dutch supporters are still doing their best to ensure a carnival atmosphere ahead of the game. There should be very little sympathy for the South Americans at the Cape Town Stadium on Tuesday night; indeed, there is likely to be plenty of derision for the locals when they come out to take to the field.
John Leicester, IoL: FIFA president Sepp Blatter’s apparent U-turn on the possible introduction of technology to help referees should be taken with a pinch of salt. Maybe he really is having a genuine change of heart, in which case, hooray. Or, perhaps more likely, his sudden reversal is just for show. The reason for the scepticism is that Blatter and FIFA have long been on the frontline of resistance to technological aids that could help referees make fewer blunders, including at this World Cup.
Laugh might be on SA as big WC spenders depart - 30/06/2010
Quentin Wray, Business Report: When Asamoah Gyan put Ghana ahead of the US in the third minute of extra time in Rustenberg on Saturday night, South Africans rose as one in solidarity with their African brothers. And as the Black Stars clung desperately to their lead for the next half hour, we were on the edge of our seats. The final whistle eventually blew and we roared our approval and relief: an African team was through to the final eight in Africa’s World Cup.
Chris Moerdyk, News24: FIFA sponsors, partners and national supporters have paid hundreds of millions of rands for the privilege of being exclusively associated with the biggest global event in the history of mankind.In turn, FIFA, has not only implemented draconian rules and regulations to protect this exclusivity, but has convinced the South African government to enact ambush marketing laws and spend R45m on special courts to punish offenders on the spot.
John Leicester, Mail and Guardian: Why is it that the FIFA boss uses modern technology when it suits him - to burnish his public persona by tweeting, for example - but not when it would do some good for global football, the game whose interests he is meant to be taking care of? Blatter merrily tweeted on Sunday that he was on his way to the historically charged World Cup match between Germany and England. Since he was at the Free State Stadium, we must assume that he saw the Blunder of Bloemfontein with his own eyes. It was impossible to miss - unless you were a linesman from Uruguay called Mauricio Espinosa.
Mondli Makhanya, Sunday Times: Even the most hardened cynics have been wet-eyed in the past few weeks as we witnessed South Africans come together to embrace their common nationhood. Never before in the history of our nation have we walked as one as we have in the past few weeks. If you count the number of times the word ’we’ enters conversations these days, you will realise that something has happened to this place. We are thinking and feeling like a nation again. During Bafana’s hot and cold performance in the World Cup’s opening stages, we all held our breath as one, gasped as one, celebrated as one and felt a collective pain on that cold and cruel Wednesday evening last week. All because of this phenomenon called football.
Sokari Ekine, allAfrica.com: FIFA decides and controls everything around the World Cup - they are owners of the event from decisions on who gets advertised, WC products, music, what takes place in and outside the stadium, the food which is sold, where the teams stay and even words. FIFA actually own words and phrases and have managed to persuade the government to suspend the right to protest. South Africa is simply the host with no real powers.
Ivo Vegter, Daily Maverick: The contempt in which Fifa and Match hold South Africans is astounding. Still, we’re an amazing country. It is here. If you don’t feel it, you’re deaf, blind and probably dead. There’s a lot to be said for the government’s original aim in bidding for the World Cup: To spur investment in football, which has for too long been a poor cousin alongside the wealthier national sports of cricket and rugby. Despite the inept, self-serving administration that has been the hallmark of South African football, the people’s sport deserves its moment in the sun and can use an injection of cash.
Adriaan Basson, Mail & Guardian: A year ago the M&G was tipped off that security arrangements for the Confederations Cup were in a shambles and that last-minute contracts were being signed with incompetent service providers. After South Africa won the right in 2004 to host the World Cup in 2010, security was always FIFA’s biggest concern. Not having sorted out basic security services at stadiums and hotels was naturally a massive problem and an indictment of the LOC.
Paul Kelso, The Telegraph: Africa’s first World Cup should be the finest achievement of a reign that, for all the riches earned, has left FIFA’s reputation battered and its president discredited in the eyes of many. Blatter has no intention of going quietly. Instead the 74-year-old Swiss is intent on securing a fourth term as president and a place alongside the great sporting dictators from whom he learned his trade, his predecessor Joao Havelange and former International Olympic Committee president Juan Antonio Samaranch. Both those men wielded influence well into their dotage.
Marc Fletcher, The Guardian: The South African member of our World Cup fans’ network says Steven Pienaar can make a difference and the Confederation Cup showed what home advantage can do. South Africa team against Spain at 2009 Confederations Cup South Africa’s displays at the Confederations Cup last year showed what they can do with home advantage. The failure to qualify for the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations was disastrous; losing 1-0 to Sierra Leone in 2008 the lowest point. In a run of 11 games in the latter half of 2009, Bafana’s only win was against Madagascar.
When life and death are more important than football - 07/06/2010
Daniel Howden, The Independent: Barbera is one of hundreds of visitors arriving every day in South Africa. She spent more than a year planning the trip. The 22-year-old had the usual fears about coming. Would the journey be arduous? How could she find somewhere safe to stay in Johannesburg. She worried about crime. And how could she afford it? In the end, she invested her life savings and some borrowed money to make what she hopes is a once-in-a-lifetime trip.
Using football to kick out Aids in SA - 06/06/2010
Jim White, The Telegraph: Witbank, like the whole of South Africa, is mad for football. Here, though, it is not glittering trophies at stake, but the safeguarding of young people from HIV and Aids, and a growing number of women players are helping to pass on a serious message As 350,000 international football fans descend on South Africa for the World Cup, it is unlikely that many of them will find themselves in Witbank, around 100 miles east of Johannesburg. There isn’t much in the way of wildlife or wine estates or stunning views across rolling veldt here in the heart of the country’s coal fields.
Buyekezwa Makwabe, The Times: Biting her lip nervously she watches the police leave the room. ’Skye’, 26, is sitting on the bed where she would have made just enough money to buy a few days’ groceries. She is a sex worker in a ’massage parlour’ in Cape Town. The Sunday Times catches her entertaining a naked man during a ’bust’ by the city’s vice squad, a unit established almost eight months ago to rid the city streets of sex workers. On the eve of the World Cup, pretty young faces selling their bodies are sprouting like mushrooms around the city, and sex workers around the country are hoping to rake in foreign currency from tourists.
Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir, sworn in for a new term last week, will face arrest if he comes to next month’s World Cup in SA, President Jacob Zuma said, notes a report on the News24 site. ’SA respects the international law and certainly we are signatories and we abide by the law,’ Zuma told lawmakers, when asked in Parliament if al-Bashir would be arrested under an international war crimes warrant.
Sy Lerman of the Sowetan explores the drivers behind South African allegiances at this year’s World Cup: A comprehensive survey conducted in the past week came up with the conclusive result that Brazil, and not one of the five other African nations involved in the competition, are the preferred second choice of most South Africans for the World Cup after placing their loyalty wholeheartedly with Bafana Bafana. And taking the process one step further, countries such as Spain, England, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Argentina, The Netherlands and even USA garnered more sentimental votes than Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Cameroon and Algeria.
Mhleli Tshamase, of The Herald, believes the World Cup will provide great opportunities for small business. For Tshamase, both formal and informal traders will have a unique opportunity to showcase their products and services: That is, if they adhere to the strict rules and regulations that will be enforced around stadia and Fan Fest restriction zones by FIFA. In his column Tshamase outlines the specifics of FIFA’s legislative rules and regulations and identifies the penalties that any company, or person, that breach them are likely to face.
Leadership Online puts the recent labour strikes into focus and questions what short and long term impacts could result from the industrial action taken by several of South Africa’s most significant unions: Barely two weeks before South Africa’s 2010 Soccer World Cup tournament kicks off, the country is facing another bleak winter of discontent on the labour front, with ongoing and looming labour actions that could cripple the country. It is turning out to be the greatest potential threat to the successful hosting of the WC. It could also threaten the country’s post-recession recovery and increase the strain on relationships in the ANC-led governing Alliance.
In his column Thabani Khumalo of BizCommunity.com reflects on Africa’s image: For him Africa’s biggest asset is the diversity, warmth, friendliness, generosity, humility and humanity of its people. The 2010 World Cup has created a wonderful PR platform for Africa to build an African brand identity that reflects the continent’s economic diversity, entrepreneurial aspirations, sporting excellence, increasing investment, economic growth, and greater stability. Hosting the WC also presented the continent with an opportunity to take charge of the management of its brand.
Terry Bell, of The Dispatch, analyses the success with which the World Cup has been leveraged in the development of the South African economy. In his column Bell cites voices of concern within the labour movement as evidence that the potential economic growth as a direct result of the World Cup may not be realised. Bell reports that steps taken recently, ranging from a production subsidy based on value added tax (VAT) to a deal on post-World Cup memorabilia, tend to be seen as ’too little, too late.’
Is Africa football’s unheralded star? - 21/05/2010
David Runciman, The Guardian: Why for all the hype is the World Cup shaped by, and in the interests of, a European elite?The arrival of the World Cup – the showpiece for the world’s most lucrative pastime, in Africa, the world’s poorest continent, is clearly an event of deep symbolism. But symbolic of what? For Thabo Mbeki, who as South African president was at the forefront of the bid to host the tournament, this is the moment when Africa finally arrives on the global stage.
Tony Koenderman, Fin24: Vodacom seems to have taken a leaf out of Pepsi’s book by cleverly using its sports sponsorship without stepping on FIFA’s toes. Its antics may annoy the football body and rival MTN, which happens to be a 2010 FIFA World Cup sponsor, but it cannot be touched. With its Join the voice behind Bafana Bafana campaign, it ropes in soccer stars such as Matthew Booth and Teko Modise in its TV ads. Furthermore, the mobile provider is cutting it close with its cellphone and Bafana shirt package costing only R200. The shirts are not the national team jerseys, but have the national colours and logo.
Together, we can do the country proud – 15/05/2010
Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe: When the final whistle blows on July 11 2010, after successfully hosting 64 matches, about 350 000 international visitors and an estimated total television audience of more than 26 billion, South Africa will never be the same again. There is a growing consensus that the lasting impression for every World Cup fan will be that South Africa delivered on its promise to host a spectacular event. Through the tournament event we have an opportunity to demonstrate that our hospitality, event and crowd management and broadcast services can compete with the best in the world.
Mondli Makhanya, Sunday Times: One would have to be a heart-of-stone cynic not to be moved by the World Cup fever gripping the nation. (Or, rather most of the nation, as one sees very little evidence of it in the city below the great mountain.) In most of South Africa, flags are flying high on corporate buildings, on people’s cars and in their homes. Those South Africans with roots in other countries are flying two flags and nobody is accusing them of having divided loyalties.
The Sowetan: This time two years ago, the country was already three days into an orgy of senseless violence we’d been plunged into thanks to moments of madness suffered by a handful of bigots. Their ferocious anger was directed at defenseless foreign nationals, mostly Africans from the continent and the diaspora, whose only crime was the ebony colour of their skins. Time, we agree, is the greatest healer. Yesterday is another country. The xenophobic attacks belong in the trash bin of history. Today we look at fellow Africans with a fresh set of welcoming Renaissance eyes. As we trumpet the vuvuzelas to egg on the Drogbas, Eto’os, Yobos and Essiens in the 2010 World Cup, let us look those from Ghana, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Cameroon straight in the eye and see friends, not foes.
This much we owe to those whose blood remains a blot on our collective psyche.
