Soccer City, the stadium where it all begins Friday and ends July 11, sits like some alien creation on the outskirts of the city that gold built.
This is the spot — or at least one of them — where men have mined the earth for decades, bringing to the surface enough gold to make a million World Cup trophies. The mine dumps they left behind are stark testimony to their quest.
The stadium is intended to resemble a calabash, the traditional African cooking pot, but it fits poorly into the landscape. The ochre-tiled oval lacks warmth and personality.
It also lacks history, but all that will change on Friday afternoon, when Nelson Mandela and 94,000 other soccer fans wend their way to the stadium and Africa’s first World Cup becomes a vuvuzela-blowing, goal-scoring, free-kicking reality.
Full story: The usual suspects vie for the World Cup – latimes.com