Lots of political and footballing heavyweights seem to be touting Queen’s Park to Sepp Blatter for a FIFA award for their role as “trailblazers of the modern game”.
Queen’s Park’s contribution to football, both on a local and worldwide scale, cannot be over-stated. As the first club to play to the passing style and rules of football in the 19th century, their legacy is the brand of football played across the globe today.
Some of the most fundamental elements of the modern game owe their existence to this special club. I can think of no more fitting recognition than the FIFA Order of Merit.
Whatever the merits of the case, it’s good to see that there’s a greater awareness of (and desire to recognise) the significant moments in the history and development of football.
Let’s hope that we can be as successful in raising the profile of Battersea Park as the site of the first game to be played under FA rules — the game that we commemorate as the starting point for The Ball’s journey to the Opening Ceremony of the World Cup — because as it stands, there’s not even a blue plaque to mark the spot.
Thanks to The Global Game for the heads-up.
An interesting interview with Danny Jordaan, CEO of the local organising committee for the 2010 World Cup in the Guardian yesterday, wherein he says:
An African team must get to the final of the World Cup at least. African teams have never got to a semi-final before. All African teams must at least reach the second round – all six of them, and we should have at least two in the last four
Blimey, that’s ambitious — but hey, wouldn’t that also be great?
My, how time flies. South Africans will be able to buy tickets to World Cup matches from June, according to an article on AllAfrica.com. Apparently, football fans from other countries will be able to buy tickets in September with the a variety of options including follow-your-team type packages being offered.
Worryingly, there seems to be the suggestion that tickets will only be offered as part of a “hospitality” deals ranging from “catering, entertainment, commemorative gifts and parking” to “air tickets, ground transport and accommodation”, although I may be misunderstanding the blurb.
Additionally, FIFA’s selected hospitality provider, MATCH is said to have “acquired 36000 rooms countrywide, including 11000 rooms from small, medium and micro enterprises such as B&Bs and lodges.” So better get booking now if you’re planning to go to South Africa independently…
[Update] Yahoo is running a story claiming that 120,000 World Cup tickets are set to be given away “to allow people from the country’s lower classes to watch… with the cost of the free tickets set to be met by the event’s sponsors.”
A little while ago, we entered The Ball into the Changemakers Sport for a Better World competition. The site is dedicated to “building the world’s first global online open source community that competes to surface the best social solutions, and then collaborates to refine, enrich, and implement those solutions.”
Please check out our entry and let us know what you think. Voting by the Changemakers community starts today so we’re keeping our fingers crossed…
[Update] Unfortunately, we didn’t make the short-list of finalists, but we wish all those who did the best of luck and hope that it provides a welcome boost to their projects.
A friend posted me this video which I think is a lot of fun even though, in the end, it’s trying to sell you a computer game. It’s at the other end of the scale to our films which use only real locations and no effects. I assume this one uses mostly special effects on top of the parkour-style acrobatics, but it looks great:
FIFA just announced the offical slogan for the 2010 World Cup, and it is…
Ke nako. Celebrate Africa’s humanity
Nice one.
And so the competition kicks of in earnest. BBC coverage starts in about half an hour on Radio Five Live — you can listen live here and probably on the Five Live Listen Again page once it’s happened. There’s also a page which is being updated with ‘as-it-happens’ information here.
Also, in related news, FIFA just released the design for the 2010 poster — which I personally think is a cracker:
Happy Birthday!
A significant part of the Spirit of Football project is our focus on the origins of the game. We decided from the outset to identify Battersea Park in London as our “Mount Olympus”, but of course historical issues are never quite that simple to resolve. There are many competing candidates for the “inciting moment” of the beautiful game and we simply picked the one that made the most sense to us.
One of those candidates just celebrated their 150th anniversary… On the 24th October 1857, a bunch of cricketers who enjoyed a winter kickabout decided to form Sheffield FC — predating the FA’s rules and the match in Battersea Park by a number of years. The “Sheffield Rules” are indeed the first recorded rules for the game we now call football and were a vital step in its development.
Our decision to use the January 1864 game as the starting point is to do with universality. The Sheffield Rules did indeed lead fairly directly to the FA rules, but there were many competing factions in football until the FA rules were formulated. We attribute the successful spread of football throughout the world to the universal adoption of a single set of rules — so that wherever teams might come from, they share a common language.
Kudos to Sheffield FC for their part in this process.
Links:
South African World Cup 2010
1
So then, there’s only 1000 days to go to the opening ceremony and we celebrate with a new homepage.
