Confederations Cup of Good Hope points the way for 2010 (News Feature)

By Clare Byrne Jun 28, 2009, 12:49 GMT

Johannesburg - For South Africa it has been the Cup of Good Hope.

Bar any eleventh-hour upsets on final day on Sunday, the verdict on the FIFA Confederations Cup - a test event for next year's World Cup - has been broadly positive.

The players of the world's top teams, their travelling supporters and FIFA have all piled praised on the relatively smooth organization of the eight-nation tournament and the enthusiastic show of support by South Africans of all hues for the Beautiful Game.

'I thought the organization was really good,' said Gustavo Silva, 26, a production engineer from Sao Paolo in Brazil, who spent a month in South Africa watching Brazil play the world's top teams and visiting Cape Town, Kruger National Park and other tourist hotspots.

The trip was Silva's first to the country and continent.

Back in Brazil, South Africa is infamous for its high rates of violent crime, he said.

But, apart from an incident at a petrol station, in which a stranger tried to lure him out of his car on false pretences, possibly in a bid to steal the vehicle, he had no brushes with criminals, real or suspected.

'It's a beautiful place to visit. Just be alert wherever you go - like at home!' was his advice to Brazilians planning on attending the World Cup.

Brazil's star striker Kaka also saw no cause for undue concern.

'Like in Brazil, all anyone ever thinks about are only the violent and bad things. And it's not true. There are many First World things,' he exclaimed.

A few days after those remarks, the Brazilian team became the second team after Egypt to report a theft at their hotel

The Egyptian case, in which around 2,400 dollars in cash was pinched from players' rooms sparked widespread hand-wringing - until several newspapers reported that the players had fallen foul of prostitutes. The Egyptian delegation has vehemently denied those allegations.

While the tournament passed off without any major security incident jumpy visiting journalists were unconvinced about South Africa's security nous.

How could FIFA guarantee the safety of all World Cup visitors? Were there any no-go areas in the country, they insisted, ignoring 2010 local organizing committee head Danny Jordaan's pleas to 'judge us on our record.'

Listing its Confederations Cup loves and hates, the Sunday Independent put 'negative European journalists' in the hate category, telling them: 'Come back with a better attitude next year or stay home!'

Complaints by some European players and media about the vuvuzela, the plastic trumpet enthusiastically blown by South African fans at games, widened the wedge between the hosts and their critics.

While defending the buzzing as a sign of the passion of fans, FIFA boss Joseph Blatter said it would be 'discussed' after the tournament, following complaints from commentators about the noise 'interference.'

Meanwhile, according to Blatter, transport and accommodation are the areas most needing attention before hundreds of thousands of visitors arrive for the June 11-July 11 World Cup.

Long delays in stadium park-and-ride systems at the Confed Cup rammed home the urgency of getting stalled new rapid-bus systems back on track, particularly in Johannesburg.

FIFA is also increasingly concerned over the shortfall of around 18,000 FIFA-contracted hotel beds for the World Cup as some small hotel and B+B owners continue to refuse FIFA's terms.

On two other scores, South Africa appears to be well within the ball park. The national side Bafana Bafana has pulled up its socks, giving Brazil a hair-raising run for its final place this week in a performance that will add to the mounting World Cup fever.

And the spirit of interracial unity South Africa hopes to foster at the Cup is already well in evidence.

Although football is primarily the sport of the black majority, large numbers of whites pitched up at Confed Cup games, clad in Bafana green and yellow.

Coming 14 years after the country's first democratic elections that formally ended apartheid, those scenes of interracial harmony, said Jordaan, was 'the kind of society we worked hard for, that we struggled hard for.'