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 Jordaan slams 2010 warning
    September 22 2006 at 01:30PM Get IOL on your
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By Sivuyile Mangxamba & Murray Williams

South Africa's 2010 World Cup organisers have rejected German soccer legend Franz Beckenbauer's warnings that preparations for the tournament are in trouble.

Organising committee chief Danny Jordaan is to ask Beckenbauer to explain his comments that South Africa is having "African problems" in staging the event.

"I do not understand," Jordaan said.

He insisted that South Africa's projects to build the stadiums were on track.

Beckenbauer, lauded in his home country as "Der Kaiser", was the head of the 2006 organising committee.

In Nuremberg this week he became the latest public figure to question South Africa's ability to host the 2010 tournament.
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"The organisation for the World Cup in South Africa is beset by big problems," Beckenbauer was quoted by news agencies as saying.

"But these are not South African problems, these are African problems. People are working against rather than with each other."

The BBC reported Beckenbauer as saying that Germany was not an alternative venue.

"There are emergency solutions, but Germany is not one of them; there are enough other solutions" - perhaps a reference to Sydney as a possible fallback site.

Beckenbauer said Fifa president Sepp Blatter would soon be travelling to South Africa.

"According to him, there is money. The plans are there, but what counts is that they are also executed," Beckenbauer said.

Blatter was reported as saying said he would meet President Thabo Mbeki and "explain the value of the World Cup" to parliament.

But Jordaan told the Cape Argus yesterday that he was bemused by Beckenbauer's comments.

"If it's a stadium problem, tell us. But he must explain what he means when he says it's an 'African problem'. I do not understand.

"We have a master project plan. We need to deliver five stadiums for the Confederation Cup in 2009 and four of these stadiums are complete," Jordaan said.

South Africa needed 30 months to build a stadium and had 44 months before the 2010 World Cup.

"I will write to him and get an understanding of what he meant."

Jordaan said he would meet SA Football Association president Molefi Oliphant to discuss the issue before calling a press conference in the next few days.

Jordaan played down a report that Fifa wanted to send a top German official to help South Africa's organisers.

"Fifa is entitled to send whomever they want to send to their Johannesburg office," Jordaan said. But an official would not be sent as "a fire engine".

Dealing with progress on the Green Point Stadium, provincial 2010 co-ordinator Laureen Platsky said this morning: "We're on track. That's all I can say. There was never any indication that we'd start to construct before January next year."

The next step was to finalise the stadium's design.

This was being done jointly by local architects Louis Karol and German stadia specialist GMP, which designed Germany's stadiums in Berlin and Frankfurt.

At the same time, independent consultants were finalising an environmental impact ass-essment, which is expected to be completed in the next few days and would be submitted to Planning MEC Tasneem Essop.

Two sites were being considered: the existing Green Point stadium site, which would mean demolishing the stadium, or the golf course next to it.

A business plan will be submitted to the Treasury at the end of October.

"Most of the cost of the stadium will be substantially the same for either of the sites," Platsky explained.

Essop would announce a re-cord of decision, which would include a choice of site.

"Once the builders' holidays are over in January, we'll be on site," Platsky said.

Meanwhile South African soccer legend Jomo Sono, who played for New York's Cosmos with Beckenbauer, is quoted in The Australian newspaper today as warning the 2010 team to take his former teammate's comments seriously.

"The problem is that we hate criticism," Sono said.

"I would not know why he (Beckenbauer) said that, but he should be taken seriously. They should talk to him."

Mayor Helen Zille said today: "Cape Town's put to-gether a very comprehensive plan. We have a strong team running it and we've met all the deadlines so far."

  • sivuyile.mangxamba@inl.co.za

  • murrayw@incape co.za



      • This article was originally published on page 1 of Cape Argus on September 22, 2006
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