World Cup a Roaring Success- South Africa to be proud, as a period of prosperity and economic stability engulfs the continent: Blatter
A day after the conclusion of the first ever football World cup to be staged in South Africa, the president of the Federation of International Football Association FIFA, Sepp Blatter has praised South Africa for pulling off an outstanding incident free tournament that will go a long way in burying the ghosts of apartheid. As the rainbow nation looks forward to a period of prosperity and economic stability and above all unity in its rank at the end of the most watched sporting spectacle in the world.
"I would also like to compliment Africa and the continent, because Africa has proven that really they can organise this World Cup, they can organise a big competition and as I said at the very beginning it was a question of trust and confidence... they can be proud, they can be proud,” Blatter said at a press conference in Johannesburg on Monday, at the venue of the final of the tournament won by Spain.
The World Cup had a truly African flavour to it and was enjoyed by all football fans across the world. In addition, the festivities also attracted a new audience to the game, people who never had interest in football, were also glued to their television sets, as the event captured the imagination of a world wide audience.
The head of the local organising committee Danny Jordaan echoed Blatter's words, as he celebrated the outstanding feat by his team.
"So we sit here this morning, very very happy, very proud to be African and South Africans. This event also had brought about new personalities in world football. One of these personalities has the name called Vuvuzela... and then another personality emerged called Paul, and I don't know whether Paul is now more popular than the Vuvuzela,"
The tournament would also be remembered for the predictions by an octopus in Germany that correctly predicted the winner in all of Germany's matches at the tournament before choosing Spain as the World champions.
On the flip side, the tournament was marred by some clear refereeing howlers, which had an adverse affect on two pre-quarter final matches involving 1966 champions England and Central Americans Mexico.
The FIFA president acknowledged that referring mistakes was a problem that need to be sorted out, ensuring that a fresh debate on having goal-line technology to determine whether a ball had crossed the line or not would be taken up again.
The tournament provided some enthralling action through out the last one month, besides ushering a number of surprises.
The greatest shock was the performance of the two finalists at the previous tournament in 2006 - France and Italy - both crashed out in only the first round of the tournament resulting in a parliamentarian inquest in France.
Blatter was however, unperturbed by their performance claiming that it only proved that the gap between the leading teams and rank outsiders of the past was narrowing down an it was a positive development for the future of the game.
"There are no more small national teams, perhaps there are small countries in the world but their national teams are very strong because the football has developed everywhere”
The next challenge for FIFA is to get the preparations in order for the 20th football World Cup set to be staged in Brazil in four years time.
Meanwhile Blatter was saddened by the bomb attacks in the Ugandan capital of Kampala that killed 74 people who had flocked in around screens to witness the World cup final.
He expressed his deepest condolences with the victims, saying that terrorism in sports was simply unacceptable and that he condemns the attack in the strongest words possible.
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