São Paulo's dithering for 2014 reminds us of Cape Town 2010

The lack of a decision about what stadium shall be used in São Paulo for the 2014 World Cup continues. Ever since the Morumbi Stadium was ruled out, the construction of a new arena started to be discussed. Now, the Municipal and State Governments hesitate to build a new arena, which would require a lot of money. This same doubt that the São Paulo authorities are now facing was also part of the preparation of Cape Town for the 2010 World Cup. The price was the loss of the right to host the opening game and a stage with a future enshrouded in doubt.

This issue is part of the work “Player e Referee - Conflicting interests and the 2010 FIFA World Cup”, which has not yet been published in Portuguese and which is presented by journalists Karen Schoonbee and Stefaans Brümmer in the chapter “Public loss, FIFA gain - How Cape Town managed to get its white elephant”.

Newlands and low cost
Before the Green Point Stadium was constructed, the most important tourist point in South Africa had the Newlands stadium, a traditional rugby stadium that could hold 40 thousand fans during the World Cup, according to the candidacy book which was handed over to FIFA. Structured and located in a rich neighborhood, only minor repairs would be necessary to bring this stadium into line with the requirements made by the organizers of the World Cup.

Hired by the City Hall to assess the costs of the stadiums at the time, professor Barry Standish, of the University of Cape Town, showed that this would be the cheapest alternative, with adaptations at a cost of some 177 million rand (€ 18.01 million).

Athlone and the Social
However, the City Hall and also the government of the Province of the Western Cape preferred the Athlone Stadium, with the same capacity as the Newlands but in a poorer area, meaning that it would have a symbolic value in the history and also in the development of the neighborhood where local football was born.

“The reason we chose the Athlone stadium was not just because of football, but because it would transform the whole city and have an impact on the tale of two cities [with the slums, concentrated in this neighborhood, on the one hand, and the mansions closer to the downtown]”, said the then-Municipal Secretary for Sports and Recreation, Gert Bam.

The arena, which cost 482 million rand (€ 49.06 million) for refurbishment work, according to calculations made by Mr Standish, was only considered afterwards because it was officially opened three months before the candidacy proposal was handed over to FIFA on 30 September 2003. At the inauguration, there was a friendly between South Africa and Jamaica, which ended goalless.

The change in the host location did not please the directors of the most important institution in world football, which blackmailed the local government on suggesting that only five games would be held there - the city held a total of eight games in the World Cup - and without any chance of hosting a semi-final, as FIFA has stated that stadiums would need at least 60 thousand seats for this stage of the competition.

“Danny Jordaan, the head of the Local Organizing Committee, telephoned [to Ebrahim Rasool, then the Governor of the Province of the Western Cape] and said that the FIFA delegation was not convinced that the Athlone Stadium could be one of the stadiums of the World Cup, and that they felt that Cape Town was not making much of an effort”, said Laurine Platsky, the co-ordinator of the province for the World Cup.

It was then that the FIFA President, Joseph Blatter, visited Cape Town and had a meeting with the South African President at the time, Thabo Mbeki. One day after the meeting, one of the ministers told Mr Rasool about the need to build a new stadium.

Green Point and Interests
In the beginning, the Municipality and the Province were reluctant to start work, but the tourist visibility and political feasibility were decisive. The former through the economic importance that it represents, and the second due to the fact that the Western Cape is the only one of the nine States governed by the opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, and hence the importance of getting things done.

Thus, Cape Town saw the birth of a brand new stadium with a capacity for 70 thousand people, with a budget tag set at 1.3 billion rand (€ 132.31 million) and which ended up costing 4.5 billion rand (€ 457.99 million). According to architects and builders, this variation occurred as a result of the global financial crisis (which pushed up the prices of materials), problems with the soil, and also the need to install materials to muffle out the noise (this being a demand made by local residents).

Despite this new stadium, the delay meant that the opening game of the 2014 World Cup was transferred to Johannesburg, where it was held at the Soccer City, the same venue as this Sunday’s final.

The future of Green Point hangs by a thread. Football activities shall probably not be able to maintain the stadium, while rugby has its historic home in Newlands and would probably not move. What really makes some local residents really angry is that the money that was siphoned into the Green Point could have been used to help with the housing problem, as that same amount of money could have been used to build 65 thousand popular homes.