Morocco # English board

2010 World Cup was made for Morocco
By Patrick Barclay

The decision to award the 2010 World Cup to South Africa was understandable, given that the tournament had to go to Africa, and pleasing in the sense that the South Africans had been so cruelly beaten by Germany four years earlier, when a Fifa representative from New Zealand, Charlie Dempsey, changed his mind at the eleventh hour.

It would have seemed almost a safe choice, moreover, had Nelson Mandela's powers been infinite and eternal. But they are not and fears that the rainbow nation will be unable to deliver its crock of gold are unlikely to be assuaged by last week's assurances from his successor, President Thabo Mbeki, that its electricity crisis will not affect international football's quadrennial jamboree.
advertisementThere are daily power cuts, some of several hours' duration, in host cities and reports indicate that there is no chance of new generating facilities being built before 2016. So how the safety and comfort of millions of football tourists can be anything like guaranteed, in a country where there is already concern over an obstinately high level of street crime, is hard to discern.
It is very sad to say this so soon after the best Africa Cup of Nations anyone can remember, but, while Fifa were right to give Africa a World Cup, the folly of overlooking Morocco is becoming increasingly apparent.
What was the thinking behind it? Did people fret that Morocco would be seen as Africa Lite, in other words an insultingly tentative step on to the least developed continent? In which case they should have been more realistic.
Morocco's candidature had the lot. It is a relatively compact country, a lot nearer to just about everywhere — notably Europe, which supplies the majority of travelling fans at World Cups — than South Africa, and both safe and sound. It could offer hotels and some stadiums. But it lost the vote and thus the time in which to bring everything up to the requisite standard.
Now, should Mbeki be proved wrong, the tournament would probably have to be moved from Africa, which would be terribly damaging to Sepp Blatter's cherished notion of a global ''football family" because in no family does anyone like to be viewed as the poor relations. Even in the run-up to the 1986 tournament, when Colombia was obliged to withdraw because its preparations were stalling, another Latin American country — Mexico, which still had the infrastructure from 1970 — could step in.
But the face of the game has since changed due to the burgeoning corporate-hospitality sector and in this case the most likely beneficiaries of an African withdrawal would be Germany, where the carnival of two summers ago could simply be reconstructed. Although anyone who attended it would welcome another, that is not the point and it is difficult to avoid a suspicion that football, including African football, has let Africa down.
Let's hope not, especially from the British point of view; should England or any of our other counties qualify, the weather in South Africa will be a lot cooler there in June/July than in Germany.

www.telegraph.co.uk/barclay

I still feel bitter about this...despite the fact that i hate football but still, Morocco truly deserved this over SA. We were better prepared on so many levels and it would have given a real boost to the economy...and would have cheered our team which is a better team than the south african one.

Never mind. I now can't wait to see how they are going to handle the organisation with its luck of infrastructure and overflowing crimes and violence.