DURBAN'S HOSTING FACILITIES RECEIVES IMPECCABLE ACCOLADES

The city of Durban should take pride of its good weather, its people and their greatest hospitality industry offered to the wider international visitor, and the city's residents were miles apart from all the numerous international destinations our beach soccer national teams have visited to date.

These sentiments were echoed by almost all the national team coaches of the countries presently participating in the five day nine-nations FIFA Beach Soccer qualifying tournament presently taking place on the Durban's beachfront makeshift stadium.



From Senegal's Diop Amadou, Mauratius'Rose Eddy, Lybia's Ali Riyani, Nigeria's Adamu Ejo to Morrocco's Hadaoui Mustaphe, all are singing praises of the eThekwini Municipality's impeccable hosting record.

It suffices to mention that Durban's finest accolades comes a day after the FIFA President Sepp Blatter had given the country (Republic of South Africa) a 7.5 % out of 10 rating over its professional standards exhibited during the two-week Confederations Cup finals by the eight soccer-playing continents that was played in the country's upcountry cities.

Even the FIFA Secretary-General Jerome Valcke noted that despite minor glitches experienced in the transportation industry, South Africa has got good potential to put its whole house in order within the next twelve months and host the most succesful world cup soccer finals ever seen next July..

The Durban beach soccer world cup qualifiers kicked off at 12h30 with last year's (2008) loser''s finalists Nigeria pitted against the first-time entrants, Mauritius, who were massacred 13-0 as the Nigerian squad gave an early indication of being this years overall victors.

The second match of the day saw last year's overall winners, Senegal, who went on to represent the continent in Marseillies, France playing against Lybia, who too, were represented for the first time in beach soccer qualifiers.
This thrilling physical game ended in 7-7 draw, and proceeded into a penalty shoot-out whereby Senegal emerged victorious with a narrow 4-3 win.

And the third and final game of the day saw the host nations team, aptly titled ''Banana Banana'' playing against Morrocco, who were last represented in beach soccer qualifiers in 2006.

Prior to the game had seen His Worship Obed Mlaba, eThekwini Municipality mayor, visiting the South African team's dressing room to give the players some motivational pep talk and blessings to be true ambassadors of the Unicity.
However, the home team continued where they had left in previous tournaments and displayed a dismal performance as they were walloped 4-2 by the Morrocco national team.

During the 2008 FIFA World Cup Beach Soccer Qualifiers edition, the South African national team had lost all iits three round robin games.Senegal had thrashed SA 8-4 in the opening game.
This was followed by a narrow loss of 2-3 to Mozambique, but Banana Banana had won the final game by 4-3 against Egypt.

Despite the SA national beach soccer team dissapointing performance to date, South African Football Association NEC member Obakeng Molatedi, who's also the Chief representative overseeing the tournament, he too also sang praises about the Durban's superb hosting facilities and commended the high number of local residents attending the beach soccer games.

Molatedi made observations about the coastal city's good weather around the season as the prime motivating factor that qualifies the city to get the fourth-year consecutive rights to host the world cup qualifying tournament.
"Surely, these credentials tell a mouthful about Durban being chosen as FIFA Host City for the oncoming 201o FIFA World Cup Soccer finals" noted Obakeng.
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