'SA World Cup will be the best ever'

By Matthew Savides

"I think our World Cup will be the best ever."

These were the confident words of soccer legend Gary Bailey, speaking at the Institute of Municipal Financial Officers' conference in Durban on Wednesday.

The topic of his presentation was "Gearing for 2010: The long-term implications for local government".

"Ours will be a successful World Cup. Our challenge is how to leverage the potential of this one-off event to make the most of it," he said, adding that it was a "Fifa event", and the football association would assist in any way to ensure its success.

"This is a chance to re-brand a country," said Bailey. "Before the World Cup in Germany, if I had told you that Germans are smart and prompt, you would have agreed. But if I had told you they were party animals you would have said 'Smart, yes, but not fun'. The World Cup changed that. Even the English, who don't like the Germans, left the tournament thinking what wonderful people the Germans are.

"The world has a perception of us (South Africans), and there it is a lot of Afro-pessimism. This tournament is a chance to change those perceptions," he said.