South Africa 2010 travelers’ update
Do soccer fans prefer beer to sex?

Headed to South Africa next year for the World Cup? Here’s the latest news on the country’s preparations for hosting the tournament.

First, though, there’s something we’d like to tell you about. Center Line Soccer will be officially launching a new message board for South Africa 2010 travelers in the coming weeks. The idea is to provide a forum for supporters to share information on World Cup travel, restaurants, hotels and other accommodations, and all the things that go along with being a traveling fan. We’ve already invited some local experts to participate and anticipate adding more. If you’d like a sneak preview of our new forums, you can find them here. You can even register now if you want to participate.  Read more…

Center Line Soccer South Africa 2010 news wrap
England is in — deploy the WAGs!

Now that England has joined the hosts and eight other nations in qualifying for next year’s World Cup finals, there’s a flurry of stories about the anticipated British invasion of South Africa. Not by hooligans or other ne’er do wells, though — by the WAGs! (That’s how the UK press refers to the Wives And Girlfriends of the England team.)

The Witness addresses the potential arrival of the WAGs in Rustenburg, the city rumored to be the most likely to provide a base camp for the Three Lions. (Paraguay, another side that’s just qualified, is going to base their operations in Mossel Bay, a city of 150,000 on the famed Garden Route.) Meanwhile, the Guardian’s David Smith takes a look at some of the issues that traveling England fans who aren’t intimately connected to the team may be facing: a shortage of hotel rooms (North West province is short 4,000 beds, according to a government official), logistics issues, and the unpleasant fact that some accommodations owners are using the tournament as an excuse to raise their rates, sometimes to exorbitant levels. (Some real estate experts are urging caution, however, saying that “expectations of massive daily rentals may well be pipe-dreams.”)

News is not all bad for travelers. Google has deployed Street View crews in South Africa so that Google Maps users will be able to virtually stand on a corner and have a look around. Engineering News reports that the images will be available online “way before the… World Cup.”

Roger Federer, perhaps the best tennis player of all time, is also looking forward to the World Cup. The son of a Swiss father and a South African mother, he is hoping that Switzerland finishes out their qualifying run successfully so that he will have two teams to support at next year’s tournament.

The number of potential volunteers that has come forward has been impressive, with almost 68,000 applications received from  170 different countries. That’s nearly one-third more than volunteered for Germany 2006.

Meanwhile, infrastructure improvement projects continue. The Financial Mail takes a comprehensive look at the past, present, and future of public transportation in South Africa

Engineering News reports that South Africa has ordered 110 new buses at a cost of about $26 million. The new vehicles, which seat up to 79 passengers, will be used by Autopax for intercity passenger routes during the World Cup and later in public transport systems throughout the country.

Improvements are also underway at the nation’s airports. Both Business Day and The Star take note of the improvements, including self-service check-in kiosks, which will be made to airports in Joburg, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, and KwaZulu-Natal.

The Weekend Post reports that a R1.2 billion (approximately $150 million) wind farm will help power the stadium in Nelson Mandela Bay/Port Elizabeth.

Finally, South Africa’s International Marketing Council is suggesting that small business owners avoid the use of FIFA-trademarked images in marketing their goods or services, as noted in this story by the Independent Online. Which means your ice sculpting company probably shouldn’t be doing this.

Center Line Soccer South Africa 2010 news wrap:
What South Africa wants from hosting

Next year’s tournament will not be the first world cup to be held in South Africa. One of the more important events in the young country’s history — and not just in terms of sports — was the Rugby World Cup of 1995.

That tournament began just over a year after Nelson Mandela’s inauguration as president, and the bonds that held the fledgling democracy together were still tenuous. The psyche of the country was split; long-time political rivals viewed each other suspiciously and, despite Mandela’s advocacy of a “non-racial” South Africa, few people really knew what the day-to-day realities of that lofty ideal would entail. Read more…

Center Line Soccer South Africa 2010 news wrap
ESPN to preach soccer to the uninitiated?

Remember all the naysayers claiming that South Africa could never build the stadiums necessary to host a World Cup? I hope they take a gander at the Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban via their 24/7 webcam and tell us again how impossible it will be. Is that a beautiful bit of architecture or what? South Africa may have issues but the ability to build a state-of-the-art stadium is not one of them. (The Independent Online reports that Durban’s other projects are proceeding on schedule, too.)

Stadiums and the rest of the physical infrastructure are not the only preparations proceeding apace for next year’s tournament — there’s also branding to think about. The 4th Annual 2010 South Africa National Communications Partnership conference was held Monday in Johannesburg, with a goal of creating integrated communications plans for sponsors, host cities, and the nation’s government. They’ve issued a press release with their recommendations for the professional communicators of South Africa and even suggested that the event could be considered an opportunity for a 30-day commercial for the country, but the Americans reading this will likely be more interested in a video which shows ESPN SportsCenter anchor Kenny Mayne in a two-minute appeal to two mainstream U.S. sports fans who are ignorant of the ways of the Beautiful Game.

The NCP web site also provides a scoop on ESPN’s plan for their 2010 coverage:

… ESPN will produce the entirety of its World Cup studio programming on-site. This will include Sports Center segments, nightly World Cup Live updates, and pre-, halftime and post-match shows, with additional studio programming and World Cup-branded segments.

Nice to know that the studio guys will be part of the World Cup vibe and not nearly 8,000 miles away in Bristol. If you can’t hear the vuvuzelas in person, you’re not part of the event! Read more…

Center Line Soccer South Africa 2010 news wrap
300 days to kickoff

It’s Friday, August 14, 2009, or to put it another way, 300 days until the June 11 kickoff of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Let’s have a look at the latest news from the host country, shall we? Read more…

CLS South Africa 2010 news wrap

• South Africa’s KickOff.com reports that Holland and Australia will use the training facilities and practice grounds of Bidvest Wits, a Premier Soccer League side from Johannesburg also known as Wits University FC. Local angle: Legendary Glasgow Rangers defender Richard Gough, who spent a season with the San Jose Clash in 1999, began his career at Wits. (Speaking of former MLS players, Hristo Stoichkov is now managing Gauteng province side Mamelodi Sundowns.)  Read more…

CLS South Africa 2010 update

There’s no shortage of stories today so let’s get right to them, shall we? Read more…

Introducing the World Cup news wrap

Today on Center Line Soccer, we are introducing a new feature: the World Cup 2010 news wrap. Aimed specifically at fans who will be traveling to South Africa next year, I’ll be poring over the news from several sources within the country in search of  information about next year’s tournament.

The first item today is from USA Today’s Beau Dure, who interviews long-time soccer commentator Bob Ley of ESPN.  Ley was in South Africa recently for an episode of Outside the Lines, the show he hosts, and has lots of interesting things to say about his experience.

This is going to be unlike any other World Cup or an Olympics. I don’t think there’s been one where there’s been a bigger or more important coming-out party. I really got the sense there’s a sense of investment and pride in this — not just South Africa, but all of southern Africa and indeed the whole continent. They really want to prove they can make this happen. They’re very proud of what they were able to do with the Confederations Cup. And they’ve still got a year to go.

As someone who just spent a couple weeks there and saw five Confederations Cup matches in person, I can vouch for what he says. South Africa sees this as a huge opportunity. Check out the rest of the interview at the link above — highly recommended.

Also in the news today:

- An interview with South Africa’s minister of tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk, who says that his country will meet FIFA’s accommodation requirements.

- Cape Town police have embarked on a tough new fitness regime in preparation for next year’s tournament.

- South Africa’s home affairs ministry is working to implement a new airplane passenger processing system by November in order to reduce airport lines. Another article explains that the new system will eliminate immigration checks in South Africa because the process will be carried out before passengers board their incoming flights.

- If you were hoping to do some camping in Kruger National Park during the tournament, you better have your reservations in hand. iAfrica.com reports that Kruger is now “fully booked for the duration of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, with all accommodation in the main camps snapped up just two hours after the reservations office opened on 1 July.”

- Finally, FIFA has begun taking applications for volunteer positions at the tournament. You have to be 18 by March 1, 2010, but you don’t need to be a resident of South Africa. Complete information is available here.  Applications for the 15,000 positions will be accepted through August 31, 2009.

Meanwhile back in San Francisco

I’m back in the Bay Area, quoting an Irishman in the headline, and writing about South Africa. It’s a pretty cool world, isn’t it? Read more…

Gutted

Johannesburg, South Africa — Back in 2004, I invited an English ex-pat friend of mine over to Solar-Powered Soccer Blog headquarters to watch the Three Lions’ first match of the European championships. England scored first and carried their 1-0 lead through 90 minutes and into second half stoppage time, only to see France net twice for a 2-1 victory. At the game’s end, my friend, usually quite sociable, simply muttered something about being “gutted” and left without a proper goodbye. Read more…

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