South Africa Without South Africa

With 392 days before Kick-off, the greatest sporting event around the globe is still not materialized. Aside from infrastructure and logistic issues, the local national team is in its worst moment of the last years. If the host nation had to play the qualifying round for the orbital meeting, this would be the first FIFA World Cup that would certainly not have the host team competing. Many could have asked themselves if USA or Japan and Korea would've qualified for their own tournaments should they have had to compete in qualifiers. No one will ever be able to answer that.

This time it's different. Due to a mere political decision to get votes from all Confederations for their election, FIFA managers had the bright idea of establishing an automatic continent rotation for the World Cup organization. Nice idea, actually very IDEAL. At first glance, this decision should be applauded since it's giving the opportunity of receiving this magnificent event to every continent. However, it is an open secret that everything inside FIFA is solved with influences, gifts, and doubtful behaviors. There is no real altruism or equality factor to make decisions inside football's governing body. Has the world forgotten the incident with the Oceania Football Confederation representative in the 2006 host country election, which Germany ended up winning to South Africa? His controversial abstention to vote due to outside pressures gave the Cup to Germany. After this shameless election, it was a matter of redemption giving the next cup to South Africa. Only African countries submitted a bid, for FIFA had established the rotation policy after 2006 election, and South Africa was granted the tournaments organization.

In 2007, stadiums and infrastructure construction was way behind the deadlines, and Sepp Blatter – president of FIFA – even talked about backup hosts for the tournament. Finally, South Africa got up to date and now billions of fans are on the countdown.

After this “brief” parenthesis, why South Africa without South Africa? The team had to play the World Cup Qualifiers because they are also the qualifiers for the 2010 African Cup of Nations to be played early next year. Meaning this that the Cup of Nations is a great test for African teams that will play the World Cup. What nobody thought was that South Africa would not qualify for the Cup of Nations, or even more, would finish last among the runner-ups of 12 groups, with only 1 valid point after 6 matches; not qualifying even for the third qualifying round where 20 teams compete for 5 spots in the final round of next year’s show. (They beat Equatorial Guinea twice, but points against fourth teams in groups of four were not valid because there were two groups of three teams each. Even counting this points they wouldn’t have qualified). Today, South Africa is 77th in FIFA Ranking, and 18th in Africa, very far from what we saw when they qualified to France 98 and Japan/Korea 2002.

Having said this, South Africa is now out of the African Cup of Nations and technically would be out of the FIFA World Cup, their World Cup, if it wasn’t because they have the right to play as hosts. Without the host team, the tournament would be an economic failure, even though thousands of people would still travel, South Africa is not as close to Europe or America (read America as the continent, not United States), or even Asia, to attract as many people as a tournament in Europe or even South America would.













No matter what, FIFA World Cup will continue to be the greatest massive event in the world. It will continue to take literally billions and billions of people in front of their TV’s during one month to watch 22 men play the most beautiful game that exists. And this will be another opportunity to show that the savage Apartheid days are over, and that what has happened in South Africa in the last 15 years has, by far, surpassed this great man's expectations. Let football rule, and kick away violence and war. Let the world repeat this historic moment when a black president who had spent 27 years in jail, gave the Rugby World Cup to Francois Pienaar, symbol of white South African racist minority, but also symbol of South African reunification.