South African hosts get favoured treatment

Photo: Phil Doyle

Balls to that: Dave Taylor, of adidas, shows off the collection of offical match balls used at the past 10 World Cups, including the version used the last time New Zealand played on the world stage.

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Some special treatment for host nation South Africa will ensure one thing: vicious rivals Argentina and England are almost certain to avoid each other when the World Cup draw is made in Cape Town next Saturday (NZ time).

Fifa is still working out the mechanics of the draw and a special meeting on Wednesday will determine how the teams are seeded for the draw.

The seedings will based strongly on world rankings and the 32 teams will be divided up into groups of eight, with each group of eight assigned to four bowls. Each group will be allocated one team from each bowl.

The top-eight ranked teams at the World Cup are: Spain, Brazil, Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Germany, France and Argentina. The next best are England, Croatia, Cameroon, Greece, USA, Mexico, Ivory Coast and Chile. Tier three, based on rankings is: Switzerland, Uruguay, Serbia, Australia, Nigeria, Denmark, Algeria, Paraguay.

Finally the fourth tier is: Slovenia, Slovakia, Ghana, Honduras, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, North Korea and South Africa.

But South Africa's status as host nation will cause some juggling of the rankings because Bafana Bafana, as they are known, are actually the lowest ranked team at the World Cup at 86, nine slots behind the All Whites (77th).

Despite that, South Africa is being forecast to end up as one of the top-seeded teams, purely for commercial reasons. That could push Argentina into the second tier alongside England.

For the All Whites, the draw looks nasty, whatever way they look at it, with Ricki Herbert's team sure to meet two teams inside the world's top-20.

If Herbert gets his wish, New Zealand will play England plus another giant of world football, such as Brazil plus potentially a third country with the pedigree of Uruguay, Nigeria or Denmark.

Herbert's hopes are not implausible, and way better than his chances of winning Lotto. The chances of New Zealand, Brazil and England all landing in the same pool are just over 500-1.

On the other hand, captain Ryan Nelsen is being a pragmatist and he hopes we will end up with a version of southern hemisphere rugby with South Africa, Australia and maybe the under-performing Argentina joining the Kiwis.

Frankly, New Zealand's best chance of an upset would be to land in the same pool as South Africa, which would make that particular group the polar opposite of the traditional "pool of death".

As for the pool of death, given that 24 of the top 30 nations have made it to South Africa (Russia is the only top-20 nation to miss out) arguably any group will be tough.

In South Africa, fans, organisers, city officials and tourism operators are counting down the days to find out who ends up playing where. A massive machine to deal with the onslaught of ticket, transport and accommodation demands is ready to kick into gear.

Even local Fifa staff and organisers have privately raised concerns about how the country will cope with an expected 500,000 foreign fans.

The fact that all teams and fans have to make their way to a new city for each match will not help this logistical nightmare. The enormous distances (Johannesburg to Cape Town is 1600km) rules out driving or public transport, so extra domestic flights will be put on, including some provided by foreign carriers such as KLM and British Airways.

Travelling All Whites fans may fancy New Zealand ending up in group D with all three games played in the northern venues of Pretoria, Johannesburg and Rustenburg, but they are not exactly the most endearing destinations for tourists. If New Zealand ends up in Pool A or E the fans will see lots of the country with back-to-back games in Cape Town and the far north venues of Polokwane and Pretoria. All Whites fans should pray New Zealand ends up in Pool G. Whatever the opponents or the outcomes, at least you'll be basking on the beaches of Port Elizabeth, Cape Town and Durban.

- © Fairfax NZ News