World Cup 2010: SOUTH AFRICA

World Cup 2010: SOUTH AFRICA

It's very nearly the world when the world turns its attention to the beautiful game. The preliminary draws for the 2010 Football was held in South Africa today. And going by the way the South African's managed the draw, all the football fans around the world can look forward to a spectacular spectacle of skill, fun and wholesome entrainment that the world cup has offered over the years, with a definite African flavor this time.

The word cup is to be held in 9 cities played at 10 venues across South Africa including: Johannesburg, which will have two venues, along with Cape Town, Durban, Pretoria, Port Elizabeth, Bloemfontein, Nelspruit, Polokwane and Rustenburg.

The excitement has already been heightened with England being drawn once gain with Croatia who knocked them out of the Euro 2008 qualifiers.

South Africa is the first country in Africa and really among the first third countries to bed bestowed with this honor. We, especially all the Asians, particularly from the sub-continent would aggress that this is an honor which is very well deserved.

South Africa being awarded the opportunity to host the world cup is no flash in the pan that occurred, as some put it as due to a series of fortunate circumstances and by things having just fallen into place, but instead it was built around years of careful planning, driven by a desire and focus which was reinforced by a steely reserve coupled with an undying passion to perform against mightier and more fancied competitors.

A testament to this resolve is the successful staging of the 2003 Cricket World Cup and the recently concluded 20-20 world cup. The planning, the execution and the success it resulted it resulted in was all part of the larger aim of bringing the world cup to Africa. It did help that Sepp Blatter had vowed to bring the world cup to Africa and South Africa was natural choice looking at the infrastructure, the skilled man-power available and the quality of it's organizational and managerial set up.

All in all this has been a very good year for South Africans, with great performance on and off the field. Apart from successful organization of the mega sporting event, they were also crowned the Rugby World Champions.

The football world cup will offer something different from what we have in the recent past; the world cup co-hosted by Japan and Korea was more about the stadiums than more about the football and had more controversy than one would have liked and lacked true 'SOUL' that’s football warrants. And the world cup in Germany, it never did deliver to the expectations of the football lover who love free and attacking football and seemed to lack the 'HEART' with the most defensive side Italy lifting the cup.. But the world cup in the Africa's is expected to deliver on all those promises by providing the right mix of 'HEART' and 'SOUL' which will be bought to life by the beauty of the land and it's people.

It will be the people that will make the world cup special and hopefully we'll also very soon see first African World Champion.

For now let's look at the venue and Stadium to be used in the World Cup.

Johannesburg: World Cup 2010 Stadium (*US$220M) 95,000 Seats. Opening match, one semi final and the final match of the tournament.

Cape Town: World Cup 2010 Stadium (US$ 420M) 70,000 Seats. Semi final match of the tournament.

Durban: World Cup 2010 Stadium (*US$ 260M) 70,000 Seats.

Nelspruit: World Cup 2010 Stadium (US$ 110M) 40,000 Seats.

Rustenburg: World Cup 2010 Stadium 40,000 Seats.

Pretoria: World Cup 2010 Stadium 50,000 Seats.

Port Elizabeth: World Cup 2010 Stadium 50,000 Seats.

Polokwane World: Cup 2010 Stadium 40,000 Seats

Bloemfontein: World Cup 2010 Stadium 40,000 Seats.

I urge all Indians and all the country to support South Africa to put on a great show. There is a lot of lesson that we can learn from them, who knows it could be out turn soon.