Manchester United price for Cape Town friendly ‘is a bargain’

THE City of Cape Town yesterday defended the decision to host a friendly match between English Premier League side Manchester United and Ajax Cape Town just weeks after failing to become one of the host cities of the 2013 African Nations Cup.

United will play friendly matches against Ajax and Amazulu next month but Cape Town’s mayoral committee member for tourism, events and marketing, Grant Pascoe, said yesterday the Mother City paid less than R7m for the privilege and got the English club at a “bargain”.

“We do not just give money away to events and tournaments,” he said. “We do revenue share so that we can recoup our costs as well, and whatever services we rendered.

“You must understand that in the Cape Flats and in Cape Town across the townships Manchester United is probably the biggest supported team, uh … European team.”

The CEO of the 2013 African Nations Cup, Mvuzo Mbebe, said yesterday he hoped that Cape Town would have the same commitment to hosting the 2014 African Nations Championships.

While Cape Town missed out from hosting next year’s African Nations Cup showpiece, they have been earmarked to host the less glamorous event.

“This assures us that they will have the same commitment for African Nations Championships when they host that event in 2014,” Mbebe told Business Day yesterday. “We will begin engaging them about African Nations Championships in the next two months.”

Cape Town was ranked a lowly sixth place when the organising committee decided on the five host venues for the tournament last month, and Durban, Johannesburg, Mbombela (Nelspruit), Rustenburg and Port Elizabeth got the nod.

Durban was given top marks for the best presentation, Nelson Mandela Bay (Port Elizabeth) was rated second, Rustenburg third, Mbombela fourth, Johannesburg fifth, Cape Town sixth, Bloemfontein seventh and Polokwane finished last in eighth place.

Mbebe said last month Cape Town failed to meet a set of criteria that all the potential host cities had to satisfy and after a selection process monitored by law firm Edward Nathan Sonnenbergs, the Mother City was dumped from the final list of host cities for the tournament.

Pascoe said yesterday they did not understand the criteria that they were said to have failed to meet and that this had never been communicated to them.

United communications director, Philip Townsend said manager Sir Alex Ferguson, would bring “the closest thing to a strong squad” as some of the side’s star players are participating in the Euro 2012 tournament in Poland and Ukraine.

Pascoe said this was unlikely to hurt their planned event in the Mother City as they still envisage huge numbers to descend on Cape Town Stadium when United entertain Ajax on July 19. “You must understand the value to us in Cape Town. They (United) will be travelling with between 70 and 100 foreign media.

“They will have television and they broadcast this thing live even though this is just a glorified friendly match, as you say. But that helps us and puts us on the map.”

Pascoe said Cape Town still hoped to be involved in the annual Vodacom Challenge that features local sides Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates against foreign opposition. English side Newcastle United were supposed to take part in this year’s event but reports claim that they may no longer be part of the event.

The South African Football Association (Safa) announced yesterday that interviews for the vacant Bafana Bafana coaching position — scheduled to begin yesterday — will now only get under way today.

Steve Komphela will be the only exception as he will be on the bench as caretaker coach when Bafana host Gabon in a friendly match in Nelspruit tomorrow. He will be interviewed by Safa on Tuesday.

Safa technical committee chairman, Fanyana Sibanyoni, said they arrived at the decision after realising that conducting interviews on separate days would give an advantage to those who came later. “It was a procedural decision that we took as the technical committee,” he said.

“We expect to start the interviews early in the morning and everyone should have gone through the process by 4pm.”