WHY ARE ITALY AND OTHERS heading for a collective nervous breakdown? Why has South Africa spent $4.6 billion – half of its annual budget – on a game?
Because, as it does every four years, World Cup fever has taken hold. Today, at a spanking new stadium on the outskirts of Johannesburg the 32nd football championship of the world gets under way.
A little more than a month later in the same stadium it will – and for every day in between – hold the attention of billions literally from Jakarta to Johannesburg.
Here’s an unprovable but almost true claim: in all the history of the world, no event will have ever absorbed the attention of so many people as a football World Cup.
As a West Indian we need to be proud that South Africa can deliver a “World Cup”, the biggest sport event on the planet.
Football is the world’s game because it is the people’s game; and it is the people’s game because it is simple. No other game rivals football as a global sport.
TREVOR SEALY
