Knife-Proof Vest for SA 2010 Fans?

The company's name is Protektorvest, and what it will sell you is a knife-proof vest for $69.95.

And it is getting a lot of attention, both positive and negative in South Africa, host of the 2010 World Cup.

The firm selling the vests appears to be South African, too.

One school of thought is, "If anyone knows what kind of protection you need in South Africa, wouldn't it be a South African firm?

And the second is, "This is someone hoping to take advantage of irrational fears from First World fans."

Anyway, it's getting a lot of notice. Including in the Daily Mirror of England.

Here is the link to the story about the vest.

Returning to the on-one-hand, on-the-other frame of mind ...

South Africa is a dangerous place. We have established that. Maybe not dangerous in an Angola sort of "organized rebel group" way, but in a "50 murder nationwide daily" way.

Sascha Cotura, co-founder of the company, says, "Of course people think it is crazy, but South Africa is is famous for knife crime."

Ao, a knife-proof vest? Maybe it's not that crazy.

And to spiff up the whole sale, you can get your knife-proof "Protektorvest" in your nation's colors.

Meanwhile, the Football Supports Federation of England is suggesting the knife-proof vest is is unnecessary and a fear-mongering concept. Said FSF spokesman Michael Clarke: "This will just panic people and introduce a degree of tension. They are not exactly going to endear fans to the host nation and we would advise them not to buy these things."

Anyway, if you're thinking of going and you want some sort of protection from a stabbing, here is the link to the Protektorvest company site.

The company co-founder says he's just offering a service. ''I can imagine that the organizers of the World Cup say it is safe, but fans want to do what they can," Cotura said. "Football fans can get into trouble. They can be drunk and rowdy unlike in other sports, so they can have problems. If they approach situations with the wrong attitude it could go horribly wrong."

Hmm. Hard to argue with that. Read more!

What South Africans Are Thinking ... Is Scary

I was going to link to a story from the Johannesburg Times on how the United States ambassador to South Africa said that Americans understand that Africa is not one country.

Well, I suppose I will do it, anyway.

It's a short story, and the gist of it? That Americans won't jump to a conclusion that Togo's soccer team getting shot up in Angola means terror is due to break out in South Africa during the 2010 World Cup, as well.

But what I found more interesting were the comments posted on the story.

What makes them interesting?

There's the anti-Americanism, of course. The whole "they know nothing about geography" thing, which no one would dispute. Though I would guess we would discover that lots and lots of people in the world have no idea where much of anything is outside their own country, too.

But more telling -- even if we take into account the contentiousness endemic among people who post comments on websites -- is the byplay/interplay between what are clearly African and European-African commenters. It is fascinating. In a disturbing sort of way.

This was a country that, the movie "Invictus" would have us believe (as well as the generic South African tourist-board line of patter) ... that blacks and whites settled their differences in the country 15 years ago ... or at least after the South African rugby team won the 1995 world championship.

Yet, here we have insults flying, many of them along race lines. There are charges of continued apartheid, of ignorance among black South Africans. The black president is called a village idiot.

Shortly, it is the sort of "look under the scab" sort of thing that isn't uplifting. But certainly is informing. Have a look.
Read more!

Japan Coach Planning for Semifinals

You don't expect coaches of even the most modest World Cup qualifiers to poor-mouth their teams.

No team goes to the World Cup planning and expecting to go three-and-out after group play. No one says, "Hey, we're Honduras! No way we advance!" You just don't say that. Even if you know it to be the likely scenario.

But talking about getting to the semifinals, when you coach Japan ... talking about how the semifinals is your goal ... is just plain wacky.

Either coach Takeshi Okada is massively deluded ... or he's got some sort of career deathwish by setting the bar his team way, way too high.

Let's hear from the coach:

"All of our opponents are a bit stronger than us but are in a range we can deal with." Okada said. "We are aiming for a place in the semifinals and don't intend to change that."

"It's never easy whoever you play. This might sound strange but I don't think it's a bad group to be in. We are not up against teams that we have absolutely no chance of beating."

Japan, remember, is in the same group with Netherlands, Denmark and Cameroon. The average fan would say "Japan finishes last there."

Japan is one of those teams (and every World Cup has 15-20 of them) who have no chance, none, of winning the championship.

Japan has been out of the first round only once, when they were playing at home in 2002. The Japanese play hard, and the team is well-organized, but it has very thin talent, and unless it gets a batch of Brazilians naturalized in the next few months (and maybe Okada knows something we don't) ... there's no way they get out of that group and win two games in the knockout round.

Anyway, weird prediction. Nobody should talk about the World Cup semifinals in South Africa this year unless they are named Brazil, Spain, Italy, Germany, Netherlands and (maybe) England.

Everyone else, most certainly including Japan, should talk about playing hard, getting out of the first round and maybe winning a knockout game. But semifinals? No. Don't set yourself up in a scenario that isn't going to happen. Read more!

Serbia Unhappy with 'Decrepit Dump' of a Hotel

Remember how England was raving about how it loved its World Cup accommodations?

Serbia ... is at the other end of the spectrum.

According to the Johannesburg Times, the travel agency charged by the Serbian federation with finding lodging for the 2010 World Cup, is unhappy with the hotel first offered.

How unhappy?

Well, a Belgrade newspaper used the words "decrepit dump" to describe the place. (I wonder how "decrepit dump" sounds in Serbian. As awful as it does in English?)

The agency didn't like the size of the rooms, beds or bathrooms, and the agency also complained of an "odor of staleness" outside the hotel.

The place is considered a three-star hotel. Most of us who have traveled on a budget would consider a three-star hotel something of a splurge. But we're not world-class soccer players, are we.

England, remember, is staying at a royal retreat.

Anyway, it occurs to me that it wasn't all that long ago that posh accommodations were not considered the divine right of World Cup soccer players. The theory being, as I recall from some spartan U.S. camps, that they were in country to play soccer, not to luxuriate in plush rooms.

So soccer players have come up in the world. And the Serbians want their four-star accommodations, too. Make that "five-star".
Read more!

For a Few Teams, an Embarrassment of Riches

You think there are, oh, about 25 national teams that are headed for the World Cup who wish they had the "problems" a handful of elite squads have in winnowing down all their talent into a 23-man squad?

Well, of course, would be the answer to that one.

Most nations are happy to have a fairly decent First XI ... with a couple of soft spots they will try to hide, in South Africa. Others have 4-5 real players, and the rest are mediocrities.

And then there are that handful of nations where coaches sigh deeply and express their dismay at having to limit the team to 23.

Take, say, Italy.

You may remember from the other day, when we linked to a story about Francesco Totti expressing interest in coming out of international retirement to play for Italy.

Now, we've got another veteran striker, big and rangy Luca Toni, talking about how he would like to play at South Africa 2010, too.

And in that story Italy coach Marcelo Lippi is quoted as saying Toni had a nice game, for AS Roma, in his first match this season since Bayern Munich dumped him.

Lippi is also quoted as saying he doesn't get to take 35 guys to South Africa.

How many other teams have that worry? How to get 23 players from 35 or 40 or 100 really good players?

Well, let's make a list:

I count seven teams that have that problem.

1. Brazil. The Brazilians could field four World Cup teams and two of them might end up playing each other for the championship.

2. Italy. Can't decide if Totti and Toni could help them. And they're only 33 and 32 respectively. That's depth.

3. Germany. The Germans will never admit this, though. They will tell you how this guy isn't ready and that guy is too old but they dozens of guys who can play at an elite level. That's how they get to the final eight nearly every time.

4. Netherlands. Getting their guys to play together always has been the Dutch problem. But no one doubts they go 2-3 deep at every position.

5. Argentina. Real players everywhere. The test of Diego Maradona's incompetence will be managing to waste all the talent.

6. Spain, at the moment. Though I'm not sure they're much deeper than 20.

7. England. Though they have that issue of "who to pair up top with Wayne Rooney," which is a bit of an embarrassment for an elite side.

And now we're done. France doesn't quite make it. Lots of competent players, but how many of those guys would start for any of the teams above? Really. Who do you want off of France's team who will make you instantly and massively better. See? Portugal has a half-dozen really good guys, but do you want all 11 of them? Didn't think so.

After that, we have teams with good players and some not so good, teams that play well together and have cohesion or style or heart and character ... but not great talent.

Anyway, when it comes to having talent deep enough to beat other people's First XI with your Second XI ... what a luxury that must be! Read more!

More 'South Africa Isn't Angola'

This time it comes from Danny Jordaan, president of the 2010 World Cup organizing committee.

Which means generic angst about security in South Africa must be something the South Africans are feeling.

Jordaan, who is in Angola for the opener of the Cup of African Nations competition, basically said what we suggested yesterday: That South Africa is not Angola.

The examples he used?

Germany and Kosovo, as well as London and Madrid.

To wit:

"To say what happened in Angola impacts on the World Cup in South Africa is the same as suggesting that when a bomb goes off in Spain, it threatens London's ability to host the next Olympics."

And, "If there is a war in Kosovo and a World Cup in Germany, no one asks if the World Cup can go on in Germany, everyone understands the war in Kosovo is a war in Kosovo."

It probably shows more than a little lack of appreciation of African geography and the geopolitical scene there for some of the former colonial states to seem to suggest, "Whoops, there goes Africa again."

At the same time, South Africa has to know that thinking of that sort still exists.

A veteran of African soccer conceded the attack in Angola on the Togolese team bus, in which three died, certainly wasn't good for the image of African soccer.

"It's a very negative blow for African and our football," Kalusha Bwalya, former African Footballer of the Year and president of Zambia's football association, told Reuters.

"It's really disturbing that something like this has happened in the months leading up to the World Cup."

Hence, taking this issue head on ... as Danny Jordaan has ... and addressing it is the proper thing for the president of the organizing committee to do. Read more!

South Africa is Not Angola

Another blast of bad news for Africa. As if it doesn't get plenty.

Terrorists shot up the team bus of the Togo team, killing three people who weren't players, as the Togolese made their way south to take part in the Cup of African Nations tournament in Angola -- which is in the southern half of Africa. Along with South Africa, host of the 2010 World Cup.

Fearing an assessment of guilt by geographical association, South Africa's organizing committee felt obliged to issue a statement today. The gist of it?

"We wish to state that there is no link between what happened in in Angola and South Africa's preparations to host the 2010 Fifa World Cup," Rich Mkhondo, a spokesman for SA2010 said.

If you glance at a globe, Angola seems in the same neighborhood as South Africa.

Actually, it's a stretch. Africa is a big continent, and the Angolan capital of Luanda is 1,600 miles from the South African capital of Johannesburg. Comparing what happened there to South Africa would be like fearing violence in Los Angeles because of some drug shootout in Mexico City. It's not really next door.

And the Angolan enclave of Cabinda, where the shooting took place, is even further away from South Africa than is Luanda, the Angolan capital.

That's not to say South Africa has no history in Angola. South Africa intervened on behalf of a different set of rebels during the Angolan civil war in the 1980s, back when South Africa was still under apartheid rule. Certainly, that South Africa government sent aid to rebels that eventually lost out to the current government, and there were reports of actual South African army formations entering Angola.

But, again, that was 20 years ago.

To be sure, South Africa isn't the safest place in the world, as we have noted here before. The world's No. 2 murder rate (both per capita and by volume) in the world.

But South Africa has no restive, separation-bent geographical bits that will be playing host to matches in the World Cup, as Cabinda will for the Cup of African Nations.

That is the biggest difference. South Africa is violent in a random and individual way. But Angola has a small bit of territory that is not contiguous with the country, a small bit that apparently wants to be its own country, and that is quite a different thing.

The unfortunate Togo team, which was not expected to take a bus to Angola (but air travel inside Africa is erratic, as we have noted), was attacked about six miles inside Cabinda.

Now, Togo is going to quit the tournament, and Africa's coloful continental event is already under a black cloud.

That doesn't mean anything like this will happen in South Africa.

South Africa isn't Eden. But it doesn't have the same issues that Angola has. Read more!