World Cup countdown takes surreal turn

The fake logo that caused all the trouble.

A knock-off of the official 2010 FIFA World Cup logo has been doing the rounds and caused an uproar at FIFA HQ when it was used by a New Zealand sports store on their website to sell tournament merchandise.

The logo shows a dark figure carrying a machine gun and chasing another man in what is quite clearly a satirical rip-off of the official logo. Pretty distasteful stuff you would agree, but even worse for FIFA, who are definitely 'challenged' in the sense of humour department.

Anyway, it turns out it was all a horrible mistake and the poor lad who loaded it onto the store's site had simply grabbed it off a Google search and either was careless, or did not know the different between the fake logo and the real one.

Broadcast centre opens

The International Broadcast Centre was opened at Nasrec on Wednesday, just a few hundred metres from Soccer City. It will be home to the TV crews who beam their images back to their respective countries, and it is quite a hive of activity already.

ITV from England, for example, have brought out a crew of 200 to work on their production, whilst it was also announced that Host Broadcast Services (HBS), the company that provides match coverage and feature stories around the event, will be providing 22 750 hours of programming during the tournament.

In total, TV crews from 70 countries will be working from the IBC. And the SABC? Ah yes, word on the street is that they did not manage to book their space in time at Nasrec and have had to move their entire production to Sandton. This despite them having over six years to work it all out. Embarrassing is not the word ...

Only the good news... if there is any

One country that will not be seeing much footage at all despite their team playing in South Africa is North Korea. It has been confirmed that matches will not be broadcast live in the country and that viewers will only get to see highlights of their team's games ... if they win! With Brazil, Portugal and Cote d'Ivoire in their group, it looks like a complete black-out for the people of the DPR.

Forget machete-wielding gangs roaming the streets of Sandton looking for foreigners to prey on, the first overseas casualty of the World Cup came with an Argentine cameraman who was hoping to cover Brazil's training session at the Randburg High School was hit by a car on Malibongwe Drive.

We are pleased to report that despite being flung metres into the air, he is in a stable condition in hospital. It is presumed he looked the wrong way while trying to cross the road (well, the right way in Buenos Aires) and did not see the car coming.

Super Eagles finally fly

Nigeria finally arrived in South Africa some 24 hours late and headed straight for their Richard Bay retreat. The Super Eagles were due to land on Tuesday, but their plane developed a technical fault in London (where they were camped) and they wisely decided not to risk it.

Nigerians never miss an opportunity to complain and there was uproar in Lagos and Abuja about why an English charter company had been tasked with taking the team to World Cup glory in South Africa, and not the Nigerian-owned Arik Air.

As it turns out the folk at Arik had the last laugh as their plane reached London, collected the players and shipped them out directly to Durban's spanking new King Shaka airport, all with minimal fuss.