Carlos Alberto Parreira, who quit his post as head coach of Brazil on Wednesday following the South Americans’ poor showing at the World Cup, has agreed to come to South Africa to take charge of Bafana Bafana. A source on the South African Football Association (Safa) executive says Parreira has agreed to the financial terms. All that is required now is his signature.
”It’s merely a formality now; the only thing that we are waiting for is his signature and it might be announced over the weekend.”
Meanwhile, the head of the South African delegation of world football’s governing body Fifa, Michael Palmer, says South Africa has five stadiums ready if the tournament was staged in the country tomorrow.
While this might be a bit of a stretch, Palmer is trying give a ”simple and honest” assessment of the country’s progress on its preparations for the 2010 showpiece.
”It will be easy to see if we are behind. We will get into the car and visit the sites where work is supposed to be happening and we will both find out the truth without speculations,” said Palmer, whose office staff is going to increase and move further in the limelight now that Germany 2006 is over.
Palmer, who last week returned from Germany, where he helped with the running of the 2006 tournament, mentioned four areas as potentially at the level required to host Fifa tournaments.
He said Gauteng, Bloemfontein, Rustenburg and Port Elizabeth do not need major reconstruction work on their stadiums, and was adamant that work will be on time in all other areas earmarked for projects.
Gauteng has the traditional home of football, the FNB stadium, and the rugby arena, Loftus. In Rustenburg there is Royal Bafokeng, Bloemfontein has the beautiful Vodacom Park while Port Elizabeth’s Boet Erasmus has had a facelift and become Telkom Park.
Palmer returned to rumours that Fifa was planning to remove the World Cup to Australia because South Africa was far behind schedule on key projects. In rebutting these claims, Palmer frequently used the phrase ”well ahead”, and insisted: ”There is nothing to the contrary to be said so far.”
Speaking from the new offices of the Local Organising Committee (LOC) in Sandton City, he said the real picture of the country’s progress will emerge in the next few weeks when more staff are employed.
This week seven interviews were finished for directors in fields varying from IT to human resources. These individuals would be taking up their positions soon.
Palmer’s comments cannot be discounted as he has plenty of experience in his field. He organised the Sydney Olympics and past European Champions League finals.
He said although most people measure progress by the visible things and think the world’s greatest sports event revolves around the turning of the sod in each and every corner of the country, there are important logistics to be factored in.
In the next few months the LOC will concentrate on increasing its personnel, which, closer to 2009, the year of the Confederation Cup, should be at its full complement of about 400.
A recruitment drive for between 15 000 and 20 000 volunteer staff will start soon. This is going to be a contentious area given the high unemployment rate and the fact that many jobless South Africans are counting on the hyped economic spin-offs of the tournament to change their lives in the next four years.
Palmer was non-committal on the issue, saying it would be up to the LOC to decide whether to remunerate volunteers. However, there was no blanket Fifa rule on the matter and the decision was entirely up to the host country’s managers.
He stressed the need for the government, particularly the local government of the host cities, to be cultivated in ways to galvanise their communities to embrace the tournament.
He warned of dire consequences if that was not done, arguing that without the goodwill of the locals the World Cup is bound to fail. This is where most of the work in the next few months will be concentrated, so it is significant to get the support of the locals.
While he said he was not downplaying the huge challenges facing the government with regards to transport improvement, he brushed aside doomsayers, saying each host country had different specific demands.
He said that what he failed to understand was this belief that there will be millions of people queuing to get to the ”same venue at the same time. Only people who have tickets — and we are talking about at most 70 000 — would be going the same direction.
”How the rest of the population gets around will be in the same way they do all the time.” Specifically, he said South Africa should mobilise its transport capacity around buses and taxis.
He reiterated the point about dedicated lanes on match days for traffic going to football venues. Nevertheless, with good organisation and preparations the country should be able to handle this efficiently without major hassles.