Blatter: Don't wreck World Cup

2007-11-24 12:42

Chris Otton

Durban - Fifa President Sepp Blatter urged South African construction workers on Saturday not to wreck the 2010 World Cup, saying the successful staging of the tournament lay in their hands.

As uncertainty continued to swirl about the rate of progress on the 10 venues that would host the tournament, Blatter paid a personal visit to the Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban, which was to host one of the semi-finals and chatted directly with construction workers who had recently ended a strike.

"I told them that they are the real workers, stone by stone," said Blatter, who was serenaded in Zulu by some of the workers during his walkabout.

"If they don't work on that basis, then the realisation of such a work, and I am not speaking about just one stadium but the whole World Cup" will be placed under threat, he added.

"If they do not work, we can speak here for hours and come back every year and nothing has happened," he said.

Unions threaten to expand strikes

Construction was halted for nearly a fortnight earlier this month by a strike in Durban while workers had also downed tools in recent weeks at stadiums in Cape Town and the northeastern city of Nelspruit.

Unions had threatened to expand the strikes to cover all World Cup construction projects before a deal on pay and conditions was reached last week.

Blatter said that Durban was ahead of schedule, but senior Fifa officials had acknowledged that there were concerns that other stadiums, including in Cape Town and Port Elizabeth, were slipping.

FIFA secretary-general Jerome Valcke said on Friday that Port Elizabeth could lose the right to be one of the hosts of the 2009 Confederations Cup, the traditional warm-up for the World Cup, although no decision would be made until early next year.

Blatter expressed concern last year that he had yet to see "picks and shovels" swinging into action although he now appeared to be more relaxed about progress.

Asked if he was worried about the overall rate of progress, he replied: "No, no, no. I can say no because it's based on confidence."

Local Organising Committee (LOC) chairperson Danny Jordaan, who accompanied Blatter on the Durban Stadium tour, agreed the stadium issue was the most vital one facing the tournament.

"If we do not have the stadium then we do not have the World Cup," he said. Jordaan however said it was clear that progress was being made at every venue.

He said: "In every single city we can now see the stadiums emerging out of the ground."

- AFP