Getting It Right with Tickets

It's late. My goodness, yes. What, 500,000 tickets available seven weeks ahead of the World Cup? That's cutting it close.

But Fifa and local organizers finally made tickets available to South Africans at retail outlets around the country, for cash, and they sold briskly.

Interesting journalism concept here: The general report is all upbeat, pretty much, and the internal, South Africa story points out scuffles in lines and a man dying from a heart attack.

But let's give some credit here: The people in charge of this finally are doing what needed to be done to finish selling out stadiums.

To be sure, it hasn't unfolded exactly how Fifa hoped and South African organizers wanted. The hope was for 450,000 foreign visitors for the World Cup, and it now looks as if it will be closer to 200,000.

Blame for that can be spread in several directions: 1) high plane fares to South Africa from ... anywhere; 2) overpriced lodging, especially back when South Africans thought foreigners were coming en masse and they could gouge them; and 3) negative news about crime in South Africa and, of late, political unrest, particularly as it pertains to race.

At the end here, Fifa is selling tickets for $20, which is real money in South African townships but certainly is not in the realm of World Cup soccer.

Thus, the amount of revenue generated from ticket sales will be markedly lower than hoped for or forecast. Planes won't be as full. Hotels will have empty rooms. (Fifa may want to think long and hard before putting the World Cup in another poor country again.)

But, at least, it appears that stadiums will be filled. Reportedly (and Fifa seems to make this stuff up as it goes), 23 matches now are sold out, including the opener, the two semifinals and the final. That's nice. It would have been embarrassing to have empty seats for the championship match of the world's biggest sports events.

We don't have to worry about that, at least. And neither does Fifa ... or local organizers. Read more!

Tickets for 63 (!) Matches Still Available

With 500,000 tickets to the South Africa 2010 World Cup still unsold ... Fifa is showing some wit here and selling them the way South Africans are most likely to buy them.

Only took Fifa a year to figure this out.

After foreigners didn't buy in the numbers Fifa and organizers expected.

After Fifa insisted on selling the remainder to South Africans over the internet -- when many South Africans have no access to the web.

Did anyone actually think this through?

So, now, retail stores in malls in South Africa will sell World Cup tickets over the counter. For cash.

As the story in the Johannesburg Times notes, South African soccer fans are not always walking around with a major credit card in their pockets. Nor are they likely to buy a year ahead of an event. They don't have that kind of money to send into limbo.

They apparently prefer to buy their tickets late, in cash, and with 500,000 tickets left for an event that begins in barely eight weeks ... maybe it's time for Fifa and local organizers to sell some tickets the way that South African fans are most likely to buy them.

The most shocking stat in the story? The contention that tickets still remain on sale for every match of the tournament, aside from the final.

Yes. Read that again.

You can still buy tickets to any match in the tourney that isn't for the championship. All 63 of them, including ... the opener between the hosts and Mexico ... the other two South African matches (vs. France and Uruguay) ... the three matches involving Brazil (including the matchup with Portugal) ... the three matches involving Spain ... and the England-U.S. match on June 12.

Fairly astonishing.

About now, if I held a batch of tickets that I paid full price for a year ago, when these final 500,000 tickets, many of them, are going to be sold over the counter in South Africa for $20 ... well, I would feel like a sap. A sucker.

This is going to be the all-timer World Cup for fans who just drop in, last minute. A country awash in cheap tickets, an average of 8,000 or so unsold for 63 matches involving the best teams in the world ... and you can walk up to a counter and hand over $20 and go see England and the U.S.

Crazy. And inviting, for anyone with can get a flight and has some time off in June. Read more!

Pele Provides a Lionel Messi Reality Check

We mentioned here recently that Lionel Messi won't consider himself a legend until he leads his national team to a World Cup championship.

It appears as if Brazilian superstar Pele, almost universally considered the greatest player in soccer history, might not be willing to grant Messi icon status even then.

Pele is annoyed at comparisons being made between himself and Messi. And he couldn't have been amused when Argentina coach Diego Maradona a week ago suggested that Messi is "playing a kick-about with Jesus." I'm not exactly sure what he meant by that (no doubt a literal translation of the Spanish), but I assume it means Diego believes Messi is playing at a god-like level.

So, what does Pele have to say?

For starters, that he has been through this many times before: this "as good as Pele" thing.

Said The Man: "They are always trying to compare someone to Pele. I always joke with my Argentine friends that they must first choose who is the best player from Argentina.

"Then, when one of them scores a thousand goals, then we can start talking."

Ooh. Snap!

Pele is credited with scoring 1,280 goals. Messi has, what, 1,000 to go before he catches him?

There also is the Best Argentine thing to figure out. Most don't seem willing yet to take that title from Maradona and give it to the 22-year-old Barcelona forward.

Pele is right. (And perhaps indulging in a little Brazil-vs.-Argentina snark.) When the Argentines have settled on their best guy, then make comparisons to Pele.

But, as the story makes clear, Pele is a fan of young Mr. Messi. For what he has done so far. He says he predicted he would be the Fifa player of the year back in 2007.

By 2009, he was.

Said Pele: "Messi did not win (in 2007; Kaka did), but I remember that I said to him, 'you'll be the next.' It took a little longer, but he eventually won. He's a great player.

"He plays very well for Barcelona but has failed to show his talent with the Argentina team. Maybe he can at the World Cup. Let's wait and see."

Ah, yes, the other sore point: Messi to date has been thoroughly unremarkable with his national team.

Pele led Brazil to World Cup championships in 1958, 1962 and 1970. Yes. Three of them.

The man set the bar really, really high. Let's see if Lionel Messi can approach it. Read more!

England Is Just Too Good!

More possum-playing by the representatives of a world power. For the benefit of England, apparently the most easily bamboozled side on the planet.

Now it is Chelsea's Italian coach who is buttering up the desperate-for-approval English.

Carlo Ancelotti says England is just too good this time around. Better than the overmatched Azzurri side, which is "in transition," Ancelotti sadly concedes.

And 50 million Englishmen are nodding and thinking, "Ah, yes, another guy recognizes that it's our year!"

When they ought to be thinking ...

"We're not dim enough to be sucked in by the syrupy praise of the Italians as well as the Germans, are we?"

We have been over this before. It is one of the running themes of this blog. South Africa crime. South Africa politics. Julius Malema. Club vs. country.

And everyone and his brother (aside from Steven Pienaar) talking up the English.

To review: How many World Cups have the Germans won? Three. How many have the Italians won? Four. How many has England won? One. Still. Even with craftier blokes like the Germans and Italians ready to hand the "don't mean nothin'" pre-World Cup championship to the Three Lions.

Hey, England fans. These guys are messing with your heads. Don't listen. Perhaps recall your infinite disappointments since 1966. Don't assume, don't expect. Keep your powder dry and worry about getting out of the group before you plot your path to the semifinals -- and beyond.

Far better to be pleasantly surprising than bitterly disappointed. Again. Read more!

Only One Ronaldo at SA2010

The Original Ronaldo -- perhaps he should be known as Ronaldo the First -- is acknowledging the inevitable.

That he will not be on Brazil's World Cup team because he is not playing well enough. Or, actually, not playing much at all, for Brazil club team Corinthians.

We will miss the gap-toothed forward, the greatest player in the world there for about six years straddling the millennium.

Remember, Ronaldo is the all-time leading World Cup goalscorer, with 15, scoring in 1998, 2002 and 2006. Gerd Muller of Germany is second, with 14.

It would be nice to have Ronaldo around, for old-time's sake. But if Brazil doesn't have a place on its team for Ronaldinho (and it apparently does not), who has been playing far better ... it certainly doesn't have a spot for our pudgy hero, 33 with a waist line going on 43.

(Oh, and just for a fun, here is a photo from the 2002 World Cup, when Ronaldo wore perhaps the worst haircut in Fifa history.)

Brazil coach Dunga doesn't strike anyone as the sentimental sort, and in his laser-focus drive to bring the Jules Rimet trophy back to Brazil, he is not going to carry out-of-form and out-of-shape forwards.

Maybe it will save this Ronaldo from some embarrassment. In South Africa, whenever people talk about "Ronaldo" ... they almost certainly would be talking about Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo.

Ronaldo the First doesn't need that. Read more!

Threats, and Threats of Terror; Maybe

It just keeps getting better for the 2010 World Cup.

The latest: A poster on a shadowy Islamic fundamentalist blog with, apparently, ties to Al Qaeda, had someone musing about how it would be nice if a bomb went off during the USA-England match on June 12.

And then a London newspaper (no, not one of the dignified ones), had a screaming headline about how "World Cup fans face bloodbath; race war declared in South Africa" ... with the news peg (not that a London tabloid really needs one) apparently being the original threat from political associates of slain white supremacist Eugene Terre Blanche vowing revenge.

The group has since withdrawn that threat. But bad news continues to bludgeon South Africa 2010 as the days begin to dwindle before Day 1.

So, yes, South African organizers said they are on the case. No worries.

More detail:

Here is more on the "bombing threat."

An Algerian wing of [Al Qaeda] has claimed it will carry out attacks on England's Group C match against the United States on June 12 in Rustenberg, prompting new security fears less than two months before the start of the competition.

But football's world governing body FIFA has stressed that such threats can occur in any country and that tournament organizers are fully prepared.

"It does not mean that because we receive a threat the World Cup should not be allowed to be contested in South Africa or any other country,'' Fifa secretary general Jerome Valcke said.

"We have freedom in the world to celebrate what we want. As the management of the organization that governs world football, we know there is a threat. We will not stop the organization of the World Cup because we got the threat."

Not to downplay the threat, but it does occur to us that England and the U.S. are in the same group as Algeria, and perhaps we have a soccer-fan terrorist here who is thinking of hurting players as much as killing civilians. Isn't that the sort of thing you do when you're a murderous soccer fan?

And then there is the English newspaper stuff.

The Daily Star is not a reputable newspaper, but it probably accurately reflects the thinking of some English fans when it suggests:

Security experts fear England fans will be caught in the middle during June’s tournament if the growing army launches a race war. White leaders have vowed “revenge” for the 69-year-old’s killing. They have urged football teams and foreign supporters to avoid the “land of murder”.

World Cup officials are now drawing up emergency plans in case race riots disrupt the whole country.

The AWB plans a show of strength on May 1 near World Cup final city Johannesburg.

Secretary general Andre Visagie said: “We have received hundreds of calls in the last two days. On May 1 we will discuss the appointment of a new leader, and decide how to avenge what has happened.”

More than 25,000 England fans are due to watch Wayne Rooney, 24, and Fabio Capello, 63, launch their World Cup campaign in 10 weeks’ time.

Many supporters have already hired extra security in the crime-ravaged country.

They are even being offered traceable panic buttons to use for emergency rescue if they get caught up in clashes.

So, just another day on the SA2010 beat. Read more!

All Malema All the Time

Eugene Terre Blanche aside, and he is dead, the most divisive and abrasive figure in South Africa today is Julius Malema, president of the African National Council Youth League.

Yes, we will get back to soccer someday, soon, but when JM is ranting, and the ANC is attempting to get its loose cannon under control ... well, it makes for some great theater. If it didn't seem creepy and pre-violent at the same time.

Today, we will look at Malema's outburst during a press briefing in Johannesburg on Thursday, when he called a BBC reporter a "bastard" and a "bloody agent" ... as well as the ANC trying today to muzzle its own youth fuhrer before he creates even more trouble.

If you didn't follow the "Malema outburst" link, here is the best of it ... directed at a young reporter for the BBC, Jonah Fisher:

What irked Malema was Fisher's comment that Malema should not criticise Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's opponents for operating from "air-conditioned offices" in Sandton because the youth league leader himself lives in the area.

"Let me tell you before you are tjatjarag [excited]," a fuming Malema said while wagging his finger at the BBC reporter.

"This is a building of a revolutionary party and you know nothing about the revolution. So here you behave or else you jump."

Amazed by Malema's response, Fisher laughed.

"Don't laugh," warned Malema. "Chief, can you get security to remove this thingy?

"If you are not going to behave, we are going to get security to take you out.

"This is not a newsroom, this. This is a revolutionary house and you don't come here with that white tendency, not here. You can do it somewhere else, not here.

"If you have got a tendency of undermining blacks, even where you work, you are in the wrong place. Here you are in the wrong place."

An angry Fisher retorted: "But that's rubbish."

Malema responded: "You can go out. Rubbish is what you have covered in that trouser - that is the rubbish. You are a small boy, you can't do anything. Go out. Bastard! Go out! You bloody agent!"

As Fisher walked out, Malema turned his fury on the rest of the reporters in the room.

"It's not a beer hall here. It's not a drunk beer hall, cheap beer hall, this. And you ask anybody, including political parties, which tried to undermine this house, what happened to them.

"You can undermine all of us, but not the house. Never undermine the house. When you are here, you are in a different terrain. You are in our space and you are going to behave in a manner that is befitting of being in the ANC office.

"You don't howl here, especially when we speak, and you behave like you are in an American press conference? This is not America, it's Africa," he shouted.


And then, today, Malema was smacked down by the adults in the ANC, who apparently have a better sense of the damage the guy is doing to the party and to the country with the 2010 World Cup nine weeks away.

In the Cliffs Notes version of that, the ANC said ...

“The aggressive and insultive behaviour to the said journalist that culminated with Mr Fisher walking out of the Youth League press briefing cannot be condoned at all,” the organization said in a statement.

It said the “unfortunate outburst” by Malema did not only reflect negatively on him, but also reflected negatively on the ANCYL, the entire ANC family, their Alliance partners as well as South Africa in the eyes of the international community.

Well, that sums things up quite nicely.

If you read to the bottom of the link, we see that Malema was creating problems bigger than bad relations with the media.

He was sending out signs on relations with Zimbabwe that run directly counter to official ANC policy. Malema is backing the policies of president-for-life Robert Mugabe, the man who destroyed the Zimbabwean economy and made his country into one of the more repressive regimes in Africa. Which is saying something. Malema has been saying Zimbabwe sets an example South Africa should follow.

The ANC's official policy toward Zimbabwe is non-intervention in its internal affairs.

Now ... we shall see if the ANC's sensible folks can keep Julius Malema from making news for, oh, about three months. It certainly would improve the chances of the country pulling off a peaceful and successful World Cup. Read more!