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Danny Jordaan is the CEO of the 2010 Local Organising Committee and for the most part, he spends his time as the face of South Africa's bid. For the rest of his time he's slamming speculation that South Africa will not be ready. We've heard you Danny, now please move on.
The fact of the matter is that nobody has written anything about South Africa not fulfilling their part of the agreement with FIFA for quite a few months and every time Danny Jordaan responds to a stupid question, it gets noticed. We know South Africa will be ready, FIFA know South Africa will be ready, please Mr Jordaan, leave it alone now.
He was speaking at the Tourism Indaba in Durban and was responding to questions focused on crime, power outages and a lack of transport and accommodation.
He also denied that there is a Plan B, that Australia will host the World Cup if South Africa is not ready.
"Anyone who wants to see the reality must go and see for themselves. We will have all our stadiums complete seven months before the kick-off of the World Cup. The capacity of the South African industry in construction is among the best in the world," Jordaan said.
"We are very happy the progress at the stadiums is advanced in many cases and in some cases we have difficulties. However, we are convinced the stadiums will be complete long before kick-off," he finished.
If you've not been to South Africa let's get a few things straight; crime is an issue if you walk down a dark alley at 3am and there is nobody about, but South Africa are training up thousands of people for 2010 and you will be fully aware of where you should be going and where you should not be going.
Transport and power issues are nothing new but all the stadiums will be running on their own independent power supplies - a power outage just down the road, while an inconvenience for the people living just down the road, isn't going to effect the World Cup.
Accommodation will be an issue for every country during the build up to a World Cup. Germany had concerns, but they were fixed as they will be in South Africa.
The event will be a success but Mr Jordaan, if you respond to these questions, they're only getting exposure. Next time somebody asks you about it, just say you've answered it before and you're not going to answer it again. |