WHEN THE referee’s whistle sounds in a Johannesburg stadium this afternoon to kick off the 2010 World Cup, it will signal much more than the start of the 31-day tournament. For the first time, the world’s biggest sports tournament will have arrived in Africa, a continent that has never hosted an event on the scale of the Olympics or World Cup.
For the billions who will be watching around the world over the next four weeks, the focus will be very much on the football. But for South Africa it will be another acid test of how far the nation has travelled in the 21 years since apartheid was abolished. South African president Jacob Zuma acknowledges that the country will be the object of global scrutiny for the next month but sees hosting the tournament as a representation of Africa as a whole and, “an unprecedented event which can unite the country’s different racial groups’’.
That challenge has been underpinned by a colossal €5 billion budget for stadiums, security and infrastructure. In a country blighted by unemployment and poverty, allocating such a vast sum to a football tournament seems extraordinary. But the benefits that accrue from hosting an event like the World Cup go well beyond the straight financial return. The boost to the national psyche is already evident in the pride of ordinary South Africans in playing host to the planet’s best footballers.
For the rest of the world looking in at the great sporting extravaganza, the hope will be that the tournament lives up to the pre-match hype. The global appeal of soccer is underlined by the fact that the cumulative TV audience for the World Cup is expected to be five times the number that watched the Beijing Olympics, making it the most watched event in the history of television. Across every continent and every time zone, the superstars of soccer will be subject to extraordinary scrutiny and analysis. The governing body for world football, FIFA, will be hoping that their sublime skills, rather than their occasionally obnoxious behaviour, will be the inspiration for children who aspire to follow in their footsteps.
That type of worldwide appeal may have the broadcasters and marketing gurus salivating but also imposes a responsibility on the players and coaches to make sure that the beautiful game lives up to its name. When the new world champions are crowned on Sunday, July 11th, it would be a fitting legacy if Africa’s first World Cup was remembered as the greatest spectacle in the tournament’s rich history. Let soccer widowhood unite.