world cup 2010 match preview: Mexico vs south africa

14:00 GMT, June 11, 2010
Soccer City Stadium, Johannesburg, South Africa

With the eyes of the world trained upon the Soccer City Stadium in Johannesburg, the opening match of the FIFA World Cup offers South Africa a unique opportunity to make a statement of intent, both for their own team and for the tournament as a whole.Bafana Bafana will take to the stage after the usual extravagant, drawn out opening ceremony and will find it tough to focus their attention on overcoming their opponents after being part of such a scene. However, buoyed by the sound of around 90,000 vuvuzelas, Carlos Alberto Parreira’s men will have the entire nation – perhaps even continent – behind them as they walk out onto the pitch and you can never rule out the benefit of having a ’12th man’ in the stands.

Coach Parreira boasts all the experience needed to succeed at the highest level, however few have given the South Africans much of a chance of getting out of a group that also includes France and Uruguay. Led by the likes of Steven Pienaar and Aaron Mokoena, Bafana Bafana have, though, been in great form of late. Unbeaten since mid-October, the side have recently beaten Colombia, hammered Guatemala, and overcome Denmark in their warm-up games and have an excellent fourth-placed campaign in the 2009 Confederations Cup (held in South Africa) to draw upon should they need to.

Their opponents, Mexico, have also been on a good run. Unlucky to lose to England after a first-half showing that suggested coach Javier Aguirre will place his emphasis on attacking football, Mexico will have confidence flowing their veins after beating reigning world champions Italy 2-1.

It is something of a turnaround considering that, under Sven-Goran Eriksson, the Mexicans were on the verge of missing out on the tournament altogether, and Aguirre now has the team playing with a freedom that brings out their self-belief. With a mixture of veteran performers like Rafael Marquez and young talent in the form of Javier Hernandez and Carlos Vela, they will be a tough proposition for the hosts to overcome.

South Africa player in focus: Katlego Mphela. South Africa left Benni McCarthy out of the squad for a reason and one of them is the form of Mphela. With four goals in his last two starts, the Mamelodi Sundowns striker has made a first-team place his own and, on the back of an incredible goal in the Confederations Cup against Spain, his star is on the rise.

Mexico player in focus: Javier Hernandez. Having just moved to Manchester United in a deal reported to be around £10 million, the spotlight will well and truly be on the young striker. Quick, agile and with a good eye for goal, he has scored seven goals in 12 games for his country. Will need to perform better than he managed in the friendly at Wembley though, if he is to prove his doubters wrong.

Key Battle: Steven Pienaar vs. Andres Guardado. Pienaar’s form is crucial if South Africa have any hope of getting out of the group and his work on the wing will set up chances for his team-mates. A great season at Everton has raised expectation, but then Guardado’s form for Deportivo has also raised the bar on the other side. Both wide men are creative, quick and their battle down the flanks will be a deciding factor in how the game goes.

Trivia: This year’s opening match is the first ever in Africa and it will be the third opener to feature an African team. On both previous occasions the African sides picked up shocks wins as Cameroon beat holders Argentina 1-0 in 1990 and Senegal beat champions France by the same score in 2002.

Stats: South Africa coach Parreira will take charge of a side at his sixth World Cup. Kuwait (1982), United Arab Emirates (1990), Saudi Arabia (1998) and Brazil (1994 and 2006); while Mexico have been sent home in the Second Round stage in the past four World Cup tournaments.

Odds: A 2-2 draw comes in at 17.00, while Mphela looks a good bet to score first at 7.50 with Bet 365.Prediction: You can’t rule out the importance of the crowd in the first game. Players at the Confederations Cup complained of hearing what sounded like a swarm of bees on the pitch – in fact it was the vuvuzela noise – and Mexico could be stunned. It should be enough for South Africa to claim at least a draw.

17,000 flights were expected to be canceled on Friday due to the dangers posed for a second day by volcanic ash from Iceland

A huge ash cloud from an Icelandic volcano spread out across Europe on Friday causing air travel chaos on a scale not seen since the September 11 attacks.About 17,000 flights were expected to be canceled on Friday due to the dangers posed for a second day by volcanic ash from Iceland, aviation officials said. Airports in Britain, France, Germany, and across Europe were closed until at least Saturday.”I would think Europe was probably experiencing its greatest disruption to air travel since 9/11,” said a spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority, Britain’s aviation regulator.”In terms of closure of airspace, this is worse than after 9/11. The disruption is probably larger than anything we’ve probably seen.”

Following the September 11, 2001 attacks on Washington and New York, U.S. airspace was closed for three days and European airlines were forced to halt all transatlantic services.

Vulcanologists say the ash could cause problems to air traffic for up to 6 months if the eruption continues, but even if it is short-lived the financial impact on airlines could be significant.The fallout hit airlines’ shares on Friday with Lufthansa, British Airways, Air Berlin, Air France-KLM, Iberia and Ryanair down between 0.8 and 2.2 percent.The International Air Transport Association said only days ago that airlines were just coming out of recession.

“LIMITED COMMERCIAL SIGNIFICANCE”

The flight cancellations would cost carriers such as British Airways and Lufthansa about 10 million pounds ($16.04 million) a day, transport analyst Douglas McNeill said.

“To lose that sum of money isn’t a very pleasant experience but it’s of limited commercial significance as well,” he told BBC TV. “A couple of days like this won’t matter too much. If it goes on for weeks, that’s a different story.”The volcano began erupting on Wednesday for the second time in a month from below the Eyjafjallajokull glacier, hurling a plume of ash 6 to 11 km (4 to 7 miles) into the atmosphere.Officials said it was still spewing magma and although the eruption could abate in the coming days, ash would continue drifting into the skies of Europe.

Volcanic ash contains tiny particles of glass and pulverized rock that can damage engines and airframes.

In 1982 a British Airways jumbo jet lost power in all its engines when it flew into an ash cloud over Indonesia, gliding toward the ground before it was able to restart its engines.The incident prompted the aviation industry to rethink the way it prepared for ash clouds.

Of the 28,000 flights that usually travel through European airspace on an average day, European aviation control agency Eurocontrol said it expected only 11,000 to operate on Friday while only about a third of transatlantic flights were arriving.The British Meteorological Office showed the cloud drifting south and west over Europe. Eurocontrol warned problems would continue for at least another 24 hours and an aviation expert at the World Meteorological Organization said it was impossible to say when flights would resume.”We can only predict the time that flights will resume after the eruption has stopped, but for as long as the eruption is still going on and still leading to a significant eruption, we cannot say,” said Scylla Sillayo, a senior official in the WMO’s aeronautical meteorology unit.

AIRSPACE CLOSED

Britain’s air traffic control body said all English airspace would be closed until 8 p.m. EDT on Friday although certain flights from Northern Ireland and Scottish airports were being allowed to take off until 1800 GMT.”When the experts give us the all-clear we’ll get the operation back up and running,” Paul Haskins, head of safety at National Air Traffic Service, told BBC radio.

There were no flights from London’s Heathrow, Europe’s busiest airport, which handles some 180,000 passengers a day, while officials at Germany’s Frankfurt airport, Europe’s second busiest, said flights would be suspended from 2 a.m. EDT.Around 2,000 people slept overnight at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, a spokeswoman said, adding they did not expect airspace in the Netherlands to reopen soon.

Eurocontrol said airspace was closed over Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, the north of the Czech Republic, northern France including all Paris airports, and at airports in northern Germany, Austria and parts of Poland.

Polish officials said if the disruption continued, it might force a delay in Sunday’s funeral for President Lech Kaczynski and his wife who were killed in a plane crash last Saturday.Airlines across Asia and the Middle East have also canceled or delayed flights to most European destinations.

However, as the ash plume drifted south over Europe, Irish officials said most of the airspace over Ireland had reopened.The air problems have proved a boon for rail companies. All 58 Eurostar trains between Britain and Europe were operating full, carrying some 46,500 passengers, and a spokeswoman said they would consider adding services if problems persisted.(Reuters)

COPENHAGEN Police shoot man attacking Muhammad cartoonist

Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard

COPENHAGEN   Police shot a Somali man wielding an ax and a knife after he broke into the home of an artist whose cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb-shaped turban outraged the Muslim world, the head of Denmark’s intelligence agency said Saturday.Jakob Scharf said in a statement that a 28-year-old man with ties to al-Qaida entered Kurt Westergaard’s home in Aarhus Friday night. But Westergaard pressed an alarm and police arrived minutes later.The attack on the artist, whose rendering was among 12 that led to the torching of Danish diplomatic offices in predominantly Muslim countries in 2006, was “terror related,” Scharf said. He said the man would be charged with attempted murder.Westergaard, whose 5-year-old granddaughter was in the home on a sleepover, sought shelter in a specially made safe room when the suspect broke a window of the home, said Preben Nielsen of the Aarhus police.Officers arrived two minutes later and tried to arrest the assailant, who wielded an ax at a police officer. The officer then shot the man in a knee and a hand, authorities said. Nielsen said the suspect was hospitalized but his life was not in danger.The suspect’s name was not released in line with Danish privacy rules.

“The arrested man has, according to PET’s information, close relations to the Somali terrorist group al-Shabab and al-Qaida leaders in eastern Africa,” Scharf said. PET is Denmark’s intelligence agency.Scharf said without elaborating that the man is suspected of having been involved in terror-related activities in east Africa. He had been under PET’s surveillance but not in connection with Westergaard, he saidThe man, who had a permit to stay in Denmark, was to be charged Saturday with attempted murder for trying to kill Westergaard and the police officer, Scharf said.

The suspect got inside the home of the 75-year-old cartoonist in Denmark’s second largest city, 125 miles (200 kilometers) northwest of Copenhagen.Westergaard could not be reached for comment. However, he told his employer, the Jyllands-Posten daily, that the assailant shouted “revenge” and “blood” as he tried to enter the bathroom where Westergaard and the child had sought shelter.”My grandchild did fine,” Westergaard said, according to the newspaper’s Web edition. “It was scary. It was close. Really close. But we did it.”Westergaard was “quite shocked” but was not injured, Nielsen said.An umbrella organization for moderate Muslims in Denmark condemned the attack.”The Danish Muslim Union strongly distances itself from the attack and any kind of extremism that leads to such acts,” the group said in a statement.

Westergaard remains a potential target for extremists nearly five years after he drew a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban. The drawing was printed along with 11 others in Jyllands-Posten in 2005.The drawings triggered an uproar a few months later when Danish and other Western embassies in several Muslim countries were torched by angry protesters who felt the cartoons had profoundly insulted Islam.

Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet, even favorable, for fear it could lead to idolatry.Westergaard has received death threats and is the subject of an alleged assassination plot.The case “again confirms the terror threat that is directed at Denmark and against the cartoonist Kurt Westergaard in particular,” Scharf said.In October, terror charges were brought against two Chicago men whose initial plan called for attacks on Jyllands-Posten’s offices. The plan was later changed to just killing the paper’s former cultural editor and Westergaard.

In 2008, Danish police arrested two Tunisian men suspected of plotting to murder Westergaard. Neither suspect was prosecuted. One of them was deported and the other was released Monday after an immigration board rejected PET’s efforts to expel him from Denmark.Throughout the crisis, then-Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen distanced himself from the cartoons but resisted calls to apologize for them, citing freedom of speech and saying his government could not be held responsible for the actions of Denmark’s press.(AP)