This June’s FIFA World Cup Final South Africa represents a risky bet that, like many wagers, poses itself as a question: Can an African nation successfully host a massive sports tournament without descending into chaos? FIFA, soccer’s international organizing body, has smartly hedged. In choosing South Africa, they can ostensibly tap into the best of both worlds — an industrialized democratic African nation not currently undergoing a civil war, and a first class African country brimming with the continent’s possibilities.

The previous Olympics were, of course, also held in a developing nation, but that event was a breeze by comparison. In Beijing, the regime used an iron hand to tamp down potential flare-ups, especially regarding the key issues of infrastructure and security. The Chinese, however, had one city to deal with, while the 2010 World Cup organizers must manage nine. What’s more, there is no iron hand in South Africa, which is in part what made the country so appealing in the first place. But with horrendous violent crime statistics, Stygian transportation problems and an angry underclass that cannot be controlled by the state, the FIFA showcase could explode like a French striker facing an Italian midfielder.

How shall it all pan out? FIFA — a powerful extra-governmental organization sometimes compared to the pre-Renaissance Vatican — is holding thumbs, to say nothing of the South African authorities. Regardless, World Cup preparations are altering the country — arguably Africa’s most important — and it seems appropriate to document these changes. In this, the first of a series of posts leading up to the 2010 tournament, we shall kick off at centre field, as it were — in the newly refurbished FNB Stadium, now called Soccer City.

It’s a good place to start for several reasons, foremost among them that fact that the grounds are the very place where the new South Africa became a genuine possibility: Nelson Mandela, two days after his release from prison in February 1990, addressed 120,000 people packed into the FNB stands and ushered in the post-apartheid-era. The stadium’s sports history is no less impressive: Countless South African soccer league games have been played at FNB, ferocious battles between Kaiser Chiefs and the Orlando Pirates — the local Manchester United and Chelsea. It is close enough to Coca-Cola Stadium, the site of the epic 1995 Rugby World Cup win recently dramatized by Clint Eastwood’s Invictus, to be sprinkled with some of that event’s nation-building fairy dust. But FNB, a concrete relic of the apartheid years, was too small for a FIFA World Cup final. Enter the trowels, the backhoes, and an impressive $308 million (CDN) — a figure not without controversy in a country where 35 million people live south of the poverty line.

Soccer City lies on a nodal point between Johannesburg proper and its largest, most important township — Soweto. It was here, in this strip of no-man’s land, that the mechanics of apartheid, and more specifically the Group Areas Act, were so perfectly iterated. Millions of blacks were forced to live in informal settlements on the fringes of the city, in order to provide South Africa’s financial heart with a ready supply of labour. Soweto was the flashpoint for the resistance movement; apartheid suffered the first of its interminable death throes after riots tore through the township in 1976. In the late eighties, when apartheid was all but dead, ethnic violence stoked by the regime turned the township into a de facto war zone. Now, Soweto has regained its rightful place as the articulation of the South African paradox: Staggeringly rich, astonishingly poor, vibrant, violent, and pregnant with future possibility.

The township is linked to the city’s northern suburbs by the M2 highway, and to drive this route is to parse Johannesburg’s essential character. This is, and always has been, a mining town. The air is particulate with red dust; there is a taste of metal on the tongue. Slanted roofs of corrugated iron flash with sun; mine dumps striated with red and gold mark the land like tribal scars. As always, the Highveld afternoon is febrile with a coming storm. This is a journey through Johannesburg’s DNA. To the right, the site of Langlaagte farm, where — as all Jo’burg children are taught — a man named George Harrison stumbled over a rich vein of gold on an afternoon in 1886. A week later, a city of tents, picks, shovels and rapacity was born. It spread virus-like into Booysens, Doornfontein and beyond — up the reef, devouring precious metal and people alike.

Only ten years after Mr. Harrison’s fortuitous discovery, Johannesburg was 100,000 strong and delivering 27 percent of the world’s gold supply. Twenty years after incorporation it was — and has remained — the richest and most industrialized city in Africa. As R.V. Selope Thema, editor of the Black Nationalist, once wrote: “There can be no doubt that the historian…will point to the period between the discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand and the establishment of the city of Johannesburg as a turning point in the history not only of South Africa, but of the whole continent.”

This history follows the driver as he takes the Nasrec exhibition grounds off-ramp, once home to the Rand Easter Show, the apartheid-era mega funfair that survived the regime for twelve years before being terminated by a violent taxi drivers’ strike. Like an apparition, Soccer City reveals itself through the red dust. The stadium looks as if it has always been here; there are no harsh angles, no sharp edges. What strikes one in this age of architectural ostentation is its modesty, which itself must count as an act of audacity. Officially completed in October of 2009, it is still very much a construction zone, but it is a question of final touches. Four months old, and Soccer City is already an iconic, inviolable part of the Johannesburg landscape.

It is roughly circular, as if fashioned by a hand. (The press materials insist that it takes the form of a calabash, the African clay pot used all over the continent.) Mismatched slats the colour of Johannesburg’s rich earth form the shell. From one angle, the Brixton and Hillbrow towers — landmarks that have always defined the city’s priapic, masculine Id. From another, a flayed mine dump the colour of polished gold. The slats are gently reminiscent of Frank Gehry’s Experience Music Project in Seattle, but Soccer City is less whimsical, more reverent. On first glance, one allows that it will stand up against Sir Norman Foster’s refurbished Wembley, and the coming Barcelona FC Camp Nou. North American stadium builders, resolutely Scrooge-like with both space and ingenuity, could learn much here.

The architects, Boogertman Urban Edge + Partners, were commissioned to build a structure accommodating 94,000, with no obstructed sightlines and all the trimmings. The guts of the place are designed to resemble the crisscross of mine shafts that form the innards of the city. There is a vast loading dock, offices, a theatre, and that reflect complicated player hierarchies. On the north side, there is an artifact of the old apartheid-era FNB stadium, which shall function as the holding cell for hooligans visiting from previous colonial powers.

Standing on the field where more than a billion people will watch two nations play for the greatest prize in sports, one can’t help but reflect on how far South Africa has come since the first democratic elections in 1994. Rows of black chairs among the standard orange point to the nine other stadiums dotted across the country — all of them in troubled, vital southern African cities, all of them essential to the future of the continent. For a soccer fan — and really, who isn’t during Cup Final? — this is akin to sitting on God’s lap. That it smells like the playing fields that a Jo’burg boy spent his youth on, that the breeze blowing through the open roof is tinged with sweet-smelling Jo’burg dust, is so profoundly moving that it feels as if the bet FIFA has taken on this wounded country shall make winners of them yet. In the middle of the Soccer City pitch, it’s difficult to imagine anything other than the extended cheers of an ecstatic crowd.

(Photographs by Richard Poplak)

PARIS: And so it was that last Wednesday, at 22h51 local time in Montevideo (UTC-2) and with a toot-toot-TOOOOOOT from the whistle of Swiss referee Massimo Busacca, Uruguay became the thirty-second and final country to qualify for the World Cup Finals, to be held June 11 to July 11, 2010.

In all, 204 nations participated in the continental qualifying tournaments that began way back in August of 2007. Now, after 848 matches and 2337 goals, we find the thirty-one strongest and most deserving footballing nations of the world left standing. And France, of course.

So with 200 days remaining before the opening kick-off of South Africa 2010 — the first-ever edition of the tournament to be staged in Africa — a quick rundown of the Thrilling Thirty-Two:

Main de Dieu

Yes, of course it was a handball that put France through in extra time of their second-leg knockout match against poor, star-crossed Ireland. We all agree on this. Without drawing the whole thing out any further than it already has been, I have three quick things to say about Thierry Henry’s handball, the most famous unpunished handball since Diego Maradona’s “Hand of God” against England in 1986.

1. He didn’t mean to do it. Of course he didn’t. This wasn’t some calculated, devious attempt by Henry to secretly handle the ball twice in the penalty area and hope to get away with it. In slow motion it sure looks deliberate, but at game speed it was a purely instinctual flailing of the arms on a bouncing ball. And it wasn’t cheating, either — handballs occur all the time in football. It’s written into the rules that when you touch the ball with your hand, the whistle blows and the other side gets a free kick. So if anything, this is a failure of officiating. Leave Henry alone.

2. It’s not Thierry Henry’s job to confess to the referee that he handled the ball. Just like it wasn’t Shay Given’s job to walk up to the referee six minutes earlier, when he took down Nicolas Anelka in the box with a clear hand to the boot, and to say, “You know, Mr. Referee, you didn’t whistle it, but I’m certain that my hand hit Anelka’s boot and brought him down, and in all fairness, you should have whistled a penalty against me.” Again, this was a failure of refereeing. Just like this crucial penalty call, for a phantom handball in the box that came after a missed offside call: Ireland vs. Georgia, World Cup qualifying, February 11, 2009. Robbie Keane shouldn’t be celebrating like that. Should he?

3. To judge by the Anglophone media’s reaction to the game, you’d think that the French are rejoicing in this treachery. They’re not. We’re not (note: while I’m living in France, and until Canada qualifies for a World Cup, I’m for Les Bleus). Nobody wanted this match to end this way. Don’t you think that the French know that they’ll be reminded of their “tainted” qualification before every match in South Africa? Do you think it’s a smart move to qualify shadily at the expense of one Anglophone nation when you’re going to play in another Anglophone nation? France instantly becomes the top villain of 2010, thanks to a failure of refereeing. Let the party begin. Ugh.

First Winners, Last Inners

Uruguay, winners of the first World Cup in 1930, were the last team to qualify for this tournament, to be held eighty years after their glorious victory over Argentina in Montevideo. First winners, and last team qualified? A nice round eighty years? That is too coincidental to be an accident. I smell the next Dan Brown blockbuster — someone get that greasy-haired Tom Hanks detective guy on the phone! He’s a detective, right?

The Chilled Envelope Conspiracy

Speaking of those French footballing villains, how excited are we about the inevitable drawing of the United States and North Korea into the same group-stage round on December 4 in Cape Town, when the ping-pong balls are plucked from that funny air-drum by some cute, overdressed young woman?

A couple more geopolitically awkward or just-plain-weird matchups that are too juicy for FIFA to resist rigging the draw:

• Australia vs. New Zealand (yes, I’m pretty sure this is possible, since they now play in different confederations, Asia and Oceania)
• South Africa vs. the Netherlands or England (the “choose your own colonialist” matchup)
• France vs. Algeria or Côte d’Ivoire or Cameroon (you know this one’s happening)
• Mexico vs. Spain (the “whose Spanish pronunciation is more correct?” matchup)
• Slovakia vs. Slovenia (the “-AK- versus -EN- mix-up match” to end all mix-up matches — even their flags are so similar that Wikipedia makes sure you’re searching for the right one!)

M.I.A.

A quick round of taps for several traditionally participating countries who should have been invited, but accidentally dumped their Save-the-Dates in the trash, thinking it was a bill or something: Ireland (cough, cough!), Croatia, Colombia, Turkey, the Czech Republic, Saudi Arabia (first missed Finals since 1990), Ukraine.

Pre-Match Anthem I’m Most Excited To Hear

This category has been officially supressed for WC2010 after Russia also failed to qualify for the finals. It’s just not a best-anthem tournament without Russia.

First Timers

No first timers in this year’s Finals! Technically, Slovakia are making their first appearance under that banner, but they’re considered to have participated as Czechoslovakia on nine separate occasions. So let’s put our hands together for Korea DPR (that’s the North, to you), absent from the Big Dance since their first and only other appearance, in 1966, when Kim Jong-Il was just a fresh-faced, mischievous young lad of twenty-five. My how the years fly by!

Le Petit Poucet

This is a nickname used in France’s domestic football cup competitions, given to the smallest village or town still active at each stage of the tournament. Plucky Slovenia (pop. 2,049,440) nipped Uruguay (3,361,000) and New Zealand (4,315,800) for the title, although tiny Bahrein (pop. 791,000) almost swiped this prize in a playoff with the Kiwis.

Africa’s Glass Slipper?

A non-European, non-South American team has still never reached the World Cup final. But “home field” advantage has helped several host nations make Cinderella runs to the semi-finals: Sweden in 1958; Chile in 1962; and South Korea in 2002. (England and France’s sole championships were also both won as hosts.)

Is this the year for Africa? Most South Africans concede that their own side, which benefited from an automatic bid but still participated in the qualification tournament and looked terrible in doing so, has no shot of playing the role of the charmed princess.

Will South African fans thus rally behind the five other African teams? The four teams considered the crème of the continental crème all survived qualifying: Cameroon, Nigeria, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. And judging by the car horns still blaring up and down the Champs Elysées, six days after qualification, I hear Algeria’s in as well.

With no Canadian side to support, and with being a supporter of Les Bleus completely stigmatized (not to mention my Karim Benzema jersey being completely obsolete while an astrology-obsessed moron like Raymond Domenech somehow still manages to hold on to a job he should have been fired from long ago – blame French labour laws, I suppose), my biggest rooting interest in the tournament has passed to seeing an African team reach the quarterfinals. Any one of the Big Four a legitimate shot, albeit a long one. At this point, my money’s on Didier Drogba and his mates from Côte d’Ivoire, who look the continent’s most complete side. But I’ll take what I can get.

Zürich-based FIFA is already trying to make sure that the African teams don’t sneak up on the traditional favourites by forcing organizers to replace the traditional African turf, an indigenous grass called kikuyu, with more “television friendly” European ryegrass. (I continue to be completely outraged by this move.) But all is not lost. After all, they won’t have thunderstix to simultaneously energize them and deafen opponents, like the South Koreans had in 2002. But they will have these: the vuvuzela, which sounds like “a duck on speed or the wailing of a terribly ill child.”

Let the honking begin! Unless FIFA decides to ban them, too ...

Illustration by Keith Lyons

BERLIN—Damn you football—I wish I knew how to quit you.

It’s true what they say about soccer being the world’s game. They love it everywhere. And so, every week, it seems, I’m presented with another Trottable football occasion.

This week I was in Berlin with a couple college friends who hail from Chicago, Odom and his wife, Helen. And hit me in the groin and face and call me Shirley if Wednesday night didn’t present another football derby. This game was a biggie: Manchester United versus Chelsea, the English derby for the Champions League trophy. I couldn’t pass it up, especially for my devoted readers in England for whom this was the last big chance of the summer to cheer for their boys. You know, cause the national squad didn’t make the UEFA Euro finals. I swear, chaps, that’s the third-to-last time I’ll bring that up. Promise.

This is the last you’ll hear from me on soccer for a while. Roland Garros hits Paris next week (don’t call it the French Open), and then, uh, the Euro tournament starts, and, um, you’ll be getting football dispatches from me every single day. Frack. It never ends…

Without further ado, the 2008 Champions League Final, via Berlin: Beifall und Spott (ie. cheers and jeers) (more…)

SOWETO—For my money, which lately consists of fistfuls of rand with pictures of buffalo gracing the bills, no sporting event invites greater tension and drama than a local derby. So when I realized that I would still be in Johannesburg for last Saturday’s match between the two giants of South African soccer, the Kaizer Chiefs and the Orlando Pirates, both based in Joburg’s predominantly black township of Soweto, it was an obvious must-Trot experience.

No matter how big a match gets, no matter how high the stakes, whether a league championship, a world final, or a match between college rivals, the contest against a faraway side is a shared experience for the local fans. While a Red Sox vs. Yankees “Armageddon�? series may induce more coronaries in New England than a mandatory government program to provide intravenous injection of chowder (those crazy liberals!), the respective communities on each side experience the drama, for the most part, with their comrades in fandom. (more…)

PARIS—Whoever proclaimed this a city of cool, hip, even-tempered sophisticates (um, that was probably me) obviously had yet to attend a football match alongside the inflamed ultras of Paris Saint-Germain. Well, I’m a PSG virgin no longer, and will wholeheartedly concede that the rowdy fans of the local sports team can lose their minds with the best of them.

Normally, a late-season game between two of a league’s bottomfeeders, in this case Paris and Racing Club de Strasbourg of France’s Ligue 1, holds little significance. Or at least, this was my impression, having been brought up in the world of antitrust-exempt North American sports (really, what’s more sporting than a competition-free business model? Freedom, baby—whoo!). (more…)