Soccer Fan Pro

We’ve got more voices on the ongoing debate of “are all these stadiums worth the money … in a poor country?”

It is a Reuters piece picked up today by the Johannesburg Times.

It pegs the cost of new stadiums for South Africa 2010 — and there are (gulp) 10 of them … at $1.7 billion — up dramatically from the original estimate of $390 million.

We’ve got both sides talking.

On one side are the people who look at South Africa’s shanty towns and AIDS epidemic and wonder how the nation’s rulers can look at the country’s blight and sleep at night, knowing so much has been spent on stadiums. When all figure to be underutilized and some hardly used at all, once the 2010 World Cup is over. Yes, the word is “white elephants” for the kind of massive projects that never pay for themselves.

On the other side are those who say Africa — the whole continent — needs a success, and the cost is almost irrelevant.

No less a personage than Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel peace prize laureate, is in favor of the expenditure.

Said Tutu: “With all the negative things taking place in Africa, this is a superb moment for us. If there are going to be white elephants, so be it.”

OK then. For more, go to the story.

The Colorado Springs Cavaliers became the first soccer team not affiliated with either the Professional or Premier Arena Soccer Leagues to be eliminated from the US Open Arena Soccer Championship Tuesday in an 8-4 loss to the Professional’s Denver Dynamite.

The Dynamite will now advance to the quarterfinals at a date and time to be decided in Dallas against Vitresse Dallas of the Premier league.

After a unanimous vote Tuesday by the US Soccer Board of Directors, neither the established United Soccer Leagues First Division nor the revived North American Soccer League will be sanctioned as an official Division II professional soccer league for the 2010 season, but both leagues have seven days to work out an interim solution for the upcoming season.

The board made its decision following a recommendation from their Professional League Task Force, who said neither league was able to provide a viable and sustainable operation for 2010 and neither met US Soccer’s requirement of having a minimum eight viable teams to be sanctioned as a Division II league.

The decision, at the moment, leaves no second-tier professional soccer league in the US beneath top-tier Major League Soccer. USL1 had been sanctioned by the US Soccer board annually since its inception in 1997.

The board stated, however, it would sanction, on a provisional basis, a merged league for 2010.

Will David Beckham be with England in the 2010 World Cup?

Don’t ask Fabio Capello.

Ask Carlo Ancelotti.

Capello, England’s manager, effectively booted responsibility for Becks’ World Cup future right over to his countryman, Ancelotti — Beckham’s coach at AC Milan.

Weird way to make a national team, but there you are — if media reports are accurate.

As you might have seen in the story, if you followed the link … is Capello essentially saying, “sure, Becks makes our team … as long as he’s playing regularly for AC Milan.”

Beckham is being loaned to the Seria A contender from the Los Angeles Galaxy again this year. And if he is fit (that is, plays regularly), Capello is ready to take him, he said.

Meaning this is up to, Signore Ancelotti.

If Ancelotti puts Beckham in his First XI and pretty much leaves him there … then Capello’s decision is made for him. Or so he says.

Seems sort of a weasel-ly way to make a decision on one of the world’s best-known players — even if he no longer is anywhere near close to one of its best players, as he closes in on age 35 (in May).

Becks is really good at only one aspect of soccer, and that’s placing with great precision a ball he has struck while it was at rest.

He probably helped his cause with his appearance on stage at the World Cup Draw in Capetown on Dec. 4. It was a canny move on the part of Team Beckham, seeming to tie him to the tournament.

And perhaps Capello now feels pressed to take the aging midfielder with the team and is ready to capitulate — as long as Ancelotti plays Beckham in Milan between now and May.

So, Becks in South Africa? You’ll know by checking the starting lineups for AC Milan.

South Africa is a difficult place to move around in. You take a commuter plane, you may exit it somewhere off the end of the runway. You take a train, it could collide with another.

You go for a drive, and you end up dead.

The Jo-burg Times has the fairly horrifying December road toll death statistics here.

So, say you’re an English fan and you want to see the Three Lions play. Match 1 is in Rustenburg, near Johannesburg.

Match 2 is in Capetown, which is 900 miles road miles away.

Match 3 is in Port Elizabeth, which is 500 road miles from Capetown.

(Oh, and an update on the air situation: Most of the Airlink fleet has been grounded for safety reasons. The good news is, you can’t travel on those scary planes. The bad news is, you can’t travel at all.)

So, that’s 1,400 miles of group-round travel for England fans. By planes, trains or automobiles. And all are scary options.

Pcik your poison, fans.