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Why were Barnes and Gough in Cape Town, when the English are up north? Odd scheduling.

there were quite a few france fans at the waterfront yesterday. also, if you were on long street around lunch time then you would surely not say that cape town is "simmering"!

@ lammergeier, the convention centre in cape town is hosting "cool britannia" an indoor fanfest running thoughtout the tournament. its where estelle is playing tomorrow night and fatboy slim next week. Each day has a different country theme but the overall theme is brit-centric. Im guessing that they have it in CT rather than up north because CT is the biggest tourist destination.

That Green Point stadium is a magnificent structure and wonderful achievement coming in at £40m Paul - especially when you consider how much stadia costs to build here.

It's good to hear about the 'belief, particularly among younger fans, that the host nation can defy expectations', but isn't that the same for all fans when no-one's won or lost yet? we all believe. As you get older and the disappointments rack up one after the other it does becomes harder though..ask England supporters and their 44 years of hurt.

One question, do North Africans really feel S.A. are representing them too or is that just a romantic 'Lion King' notion..it certainly isn't like that between most European teams apart from in Eurovision?

Its not just in the last few weeks that SA went football crazy. I was in Cape Town in February and there were football channels showing football all day. They even broadcast live games of liverpool reserves and from the commentary you would have thought it was the FA Cup final.
Also when you drive along the motorways, you see hundreds of football games in progress along both sides of the roads as you drive through the miles of shanty-towns around the city centres.
I just hope they do well. The nation/continent deserves it and we spoiled europeans can certainly survive not being the stars this time.

Hi Paul,
I'm a brit who has been living in Cape Town for the last 15 years, and I can honestly say that The Capetonians are just as excited as any other part of SA. The passion that has been shown in the last few weeks by most people has been great, and while there still be one or two people who are not that interested I would say it is a very small minority and isn't that the case in most countries in the world.
Personally I can't wait to go to the stadium for the first time on Monday and while I'm sure it will be a different atmosphere to Old Trafford or the Bridge, on a Saturday afternoon, it will have a truly South African feel and even if we don't get the numbers from overseas the locals will make up for that.
I hope you enjoy your time over hear as.

Dear Mr Fletcher

The 'Green Point Stadium' cost £220 million, not £40m. Perhaps you were thinking of the old stadium which was demolished to make way for this one? Even with lower labour costs in SA you can't build a 70,000 seater for £40m!

I'm very excited for the World Cup, no matter where it is.
But I just think that using South Africa to speak for the entire continent of Africa is so completely wrong and over-hyped. There are so many things so completely different about South Africa compared to other places in Africa that using this WC as a litmus test of sorts is not fair to the rest of the continent, and the hype-speech given out by so many of its organizers will end up biting them in the arse.
I think the jury's still out, and we'll see how it goes in South Africa a year after the WC. You never know. I just think they should tone down their overzealous "we can do it well and even better than other places" type speech, because sensible people know that the foreign fans' turnout is just not that good.

My friend is boarding a flight at Heathrow to Cape Town ask i type this. He just sent me a message saying that there are quite a few england fans in the airport, and hes talked to some that dont have tickets yet! I find that totally crazy. It took me a while to get tickets for Cape Town, but eventually got them online last weekend. It hasn't been that hard to get tickets. Long way to come without them!

Lets hope the tournament shows Africa, and South Africa in particular in a good light, as this is a great opportunity for the country to boost it's tourism industry. Many people in Europe are put off from visiting what is a beautiful country because of the appalling Crime figures.

6 is right Paul. Even with exchange rate/ labour costs, you couldn't build a stadium of the size and quality of green point for £40 million!

Multiply that by 5 and you'd still be short. Where did you get that figure from?

I seriously doubt that Greenpoint Stadium cost £40 million. I suspect the number is more like 10 times that, given that the total cost of all the stadiums, some of which were only refurbished, was around £3 billion. Either way, it is a magnificent venue, as are all the other stadia.

Regardless, it's going to be an incredible World Cup. Good luck Bafana Bafana!

Greenpoint stadium looks amazing whatever the cost, I'm sure CT will be buzzing!

Hi Paul.

The latest SA Rand/GBP exchange rate is 11.33, so '4 billion rand' would be over £350m not £40m... hope you haven't been changing your currency somewhere dodgy if you're getting quoted 100 to 1!

What a negative view from your typical Brit.

Where is Robbo when u need him.

"Got a taxi back to the hotel from the centre of Cape Town tonight. The driver was convinced Bafana Bafana will win the World Cup. And I don't even think he'd been drinking."

Haha Paul I totally know what you mean! The nation really is behind Bafana Bafana and its great. There is a huge amount of pride and excitement around at the moment. I am a little worried though that they could be in for a shock come tomorrow afternoon. I hope not.

#JoC, you actually don't have to go that far north to see whether Africa is feeling the world cup. I suspect for political correctness reasons this world cup is being branded as Africa's world cup, simply because it is being hosted by an African nation. I stay in Botswana and I can say yes there is excitement but nothing more than if the WC was in Uruguay or Antarctica. For all intents and purposes this is a South African world cup. Another point, you often hear people saying vuvuzela's are an African feature, yet nothing could be further from the truth. They are distinctly a feature of South African football. You'd be hard pressed to find them anywhere else on the continent

who is paul fletcher has he been to cape town?

Paul I leave the money conversion down to google :)

searching "4 billion rand to sterling" gives back
4 billion South African rands = 353.405876 million British pounds

hope its useful. Looking forward to kickoff tonight can imagine the Buzz around in SA, well and the rest of the world I guess

One question, do North Africans really feel S.A. are representing them too or is that just a romantic 'Lion King' notion..it certainly isn't like that between most European teams apart from in Eurovision? your europe people you really amaze me with your quetions????

This comment won't go down too well but I actually hope the World Cup goes quite badly in South Africa this summer. I'm hoping that the football is excellent but I just wish for something to go disastrously wrong that proves everything isn't sunshine and kittens in Africa just because they have the World Cup.

For years many many nations have been pumping billions (£$) into Africa as a continent for things to improve over there yet nothing ever seems to change. The likes of Mugabe still ruin thousands of lives, there's still mass famine and disease. Even in the run up to the start of this years World Cup people have been warned about the amazing crime rate in South Africa.

African football may have come a long way in recent years but the decay of the continent is still very clear to see. Sugar coating how great Africa is with giving them a World Cup seems very very naive.

So £220 million ish for a stadium eh?....I hate to rain on anyones parade but South Africa is still a desperately poor nation with the highest incidence of child mortality and hiv in the world. You only have to scratch below the glittering world of Cape Town City Centre to find it..

For those who live there, just imagine what a difference £220m would have made in Khayelitsha,Langa, Bonteheuwel and the many squatter camps just outside the City..

What those kids need is food, medicine and homes not a bloody stadium...still enjoy your world cup and forget how many kids will die during it....

the reason everyone should like the world cup

Something I picked up from the web for you international guys to check out, so you understand what this means to our country :)

I was on Long Street last night in Cape Town, and the scenes that greeted me were utterly fantastic. Germans, Australians, Greeks, Chileans, English, Americans, Uruguayans, South Africans and Frenchman were all over the show doing their best to inject their own particular national brand of energy into the evening’s proceedings. Even outside the Grand Parade by City Hall, I saw a show of national colours that had me suffering the hee-bee-jee-bees.

While the world has been building up to the 2010 World Cup for perhaps a year, for South Africans, we have been waiting sevens years, and that waiting is over. The time has come to show the world what South Africa is all about.

A person I live with mentioned to me that South Africans are so scared of looking bad to the outside world that we act friendly because of that. I’m sure there are many who think that negatively, but to all you doubters, nay-sayers and harbingers of doom: get stuffed.

Our national psyche is an incredibly complex one. The South Africa of today is a melting pot of colours, cultures, and creeds. We have one of the world’s highest crime rates, generations across the colour spectrum (divide is the world the naysayers would use) will forever be touched and affected by our history, we battle to ensure those that follow don’t inherit our prejudices, and the future is uncertain.

So why do I feel so positive today, June 11 2010? Through all the doubt, through all the crime (I myself have been mugged in the last month at knife point), through all the bad press, through all the blood curdling actions of our immature political leadership, we now stand on the brink of history.

International observers might wonder why our country is going balls to the wall in the name of what is after all, just a soccer/football tournament. They probably already know about the economic benefits that the tournament will bring (and its disadvantages) and maybe they, ‘the international’, have an inkling of what it means to us to host the rest of the world.

The fact of the matter is, as South Africans, we all share a unique history and common story that is unique to our land. We are conscious of our failings, perhaps too much so, as we are weighed down by our guilt, our desires, our expectations, and our debts to each other.

However, it is moments like these where I realise how blessed I am to be a South African. The problems we have today are nothing compared to what we are still conquering, every moment of everyday. Everyday this nation, in one guise or another, challenges itself to move beyond the easy, ignore the short cut and push forward, one step at a time. Where on earth can you be raised in such a vibrant and interesting place?

Today is a day for all South Africans. I, for one, have never been prouder to be a son of this land, a son of Africa, and most of all, South African. Watching Desmond Tutu show his unbridled joy to millions yesterday on television was wonderful to watch, since even though I was in a bar surrounded by foreigners, I have never felt more at home. While this time of national joy will last a month, by Christ, we deserve it.

In unity there is strength, in our diversity there is power. Together, as we have now shown the world, we can do it. We won’t always get it right and not all the time, but now is the time to lap up the national bread and honey that we all need. Our role now is to welcome the world and show them a party they have never experienced before, and make sure they never forget.

Modusman!

Yes there is still mass poverty! but you too would be greatly naive to think that money will stop the problem....child will die, drugs will ravage the landscape....people will go hungry...we can and prevent it, but we cant stop it.....its the way o fthe AFRICAN LIFE....IT REALLY DOES NOT MATTER HOW MUCH MONEY YOU PUMP INTO IT...YOU HAVE TO EDUCATE THE PEOPLE FIRST......(excuse the caps, ive just realised).

The World Cup bring hope and happiness to people...I for one would rather the SA children argue over who will win the cup, or play football then smoke 'tik'....

Im not blind Im a realist!

#22 swazii wrote: your europe people you really amaze me with your quetions????
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Sorry, in what way do you mean? I was just querying being constantly told by the 'romanticised' western media that the tournament in S.A. is completely representative of Africa as a whole and everthing 'there-in' no matter where you live on that vast continent and you are all equally proud/excited/happy they've got it and not your own nation and will support them..it's a genuine question? I know it's Africa's first host World Cup, but in Europe having a tournament in say the Ukraine is quite different from hosting one in say Spain (not worse just different), and S.A. gets to host loads of international rugby and cricket etc too. It's not their first big event. Can S.A be compared to Egypt?

The comment by #18 MugabelovestheEPL seems to suggest we are being fed a lot of story book fiction that's a bit patronising and irritating to some. It's Africa so wheel out the Safari images. No matter where in the world it's hosted people would be on the streets in footie kits with flags, mixing and having a good time. I'm no way knocking this and hope the tournament is brilliant so Fifa will have 'no excuse' not to return to other parts of the continent in the future, but will Botswana/Zimbabwe/Ethiopia/Sudan etc benefit by supporting S.A or is it just like asking Holland to support Germany?

I hope this blog is truely international.
Are my fellow football fans & readers aware of how the internet portal of one of Spain's national television channels Telecinco describes this sporting event?
They refer to as the first world cup to be staged in a "black continent (continente negro).

This is the first soccer world cup in Africa. I am proud of what is happening in S Africa_ the excitement, the cooperation and focus of all. I hope the criminals will bury their tools of trade and let us savour the flavour of this great time. I hope the unity will continue after the soccer fiesta. I hope the xenophobia will cease. I hope the racial and economic divide be further addressed. I hope. I hope...and I hope all Africans will hope. We will not squander this marvellous opportunity. Viva S Africa, Viva Africa. Viva FIFA.

From the live feed today...
"France are taking far too long to transition the ball from defence to attack." Is transition a verb now? What was wrong with 'transfer'?

it won't be that easy for England

The 2010 World Cup experience was very exciting! And I believe that South Africa grabbed their chance to shine as host nation with both hands and the world took notice of the success of the biggest sporting event on the planet!
Agreed with # 27 – Yes, there was a great deal of negativity and much was said when South Africa was awarded the right to host the 2010 World Cup, but the only way to prove the doubters wrong was through patience and perseverance. There are profound and visible problems around, crime and poverty which must be addressed but South Africa absolutely heading in the right direction and I'm sure things will improve further.
The important thing now is that the expense of the tournament is managed correctly, and that's a huge challenge. South Africa made the entire African continent proud and proved the critics wrong concerning their ability to host the world.
This is what South Africa and the South African people have done -- welcomed the world brilliantly!
I think, the future looks bright for South Africa and the country is now on the world map for given the world a unique and wholly pleasing tournament This country has so much to offer and I hope that it continues on the path of achieving its full potential.