Having travelled around the world for the past eight months, visiting 86 countries and touching down in more than 50 capitals on the African continent, the most coveted prize in world sport is coming to the Eastern Cape next week.
Having travelled around the world for the past eight months, visiting 86 countries and touching down in more than 50 capitals on the African continent, the most coveted prize in world sport is coming to the Eastern Cape next week.
The Coca-Cola World Cup Trophy Tour has seen the trophy make its way from Switzerland to South Africa in a 134 017km around-the-world journey. The trophy will arrive in the Eastern Cape, housed in a glass casing and on board a plane especially commissioned by Coca-Cola.
The trophy will then travel from venue to venue in a specially branded helicopter, followed on the road by a large support team who will run and stage the tour events.
The 36.5cm, 5kg, 18 carat solid-gold trophy is probably the most recognisable symbol of the World Cup, with all the joy and glory attached to winning the tournament associated with it.
Images of victorious captains Deschamps, Cafu and Cannavaro hoisting the trophy into the air in past years have become iconic images, and sources of national unity and pride.
The trophy tour is an attempt to bring this sense of glory to people around the world who won’t get a chance to ever see the trophy.
The general manager for Fifa World Cup 2010 for Coca- Cola, South Africa Onwell Msomi, says that seeing the trophy would be a “once-ina- lifetime experience for the people of the Eastern Cape”.
Msomi also said that “ordinary South Africans can enjoy the euphoria of the Fifa 2010 World Cup trophy” and that South Africans could “could claim their own special memory of 2010” by seeing it.
Under Fifa regulations, only Fifa officials, heads of state and winning teams may touch the trophy, so fans won’t be able to hold, or even breathe on the World Cup prize. Coca-Cola, however, will allow winners of their Pashasha competition to have their pictures taken with the trophy.
“Not everybody will be able to see a World Cup match live in a stadium, but they will have an opportunity to experience the Coca-Cola Trophy tour,” said Msomi.
The trophy tour will no doubt bring the World Cup fever and excitement to the Eastern Cape when it arrives in Port Elizabeth next Wednesday, but the entire campaign reeks of corporate high-mindedness and elitism.
By law, the World Cup trophybelongs solely to Fifa a gold-plated replica is handed to the winning team when they leave the host country and the original is whisked back to Switzerland.
In the last eight months, however, Coca-Cola have been granted the right to parade the World Cup in branded transport and grant lucky draw winners of their own competitions and “ordinary South Africans” the chance to experience the experience.
Waves of football fever seem to be magnanimously granted to fans by big corporate sponsors and partners – whether in the form of free tickets from Visa, jerseys from Adidas or the actual World Cup trophy from Coca- Cola.
Regardless of where the hand-outs are coming from, their motives or at whose discretion they are being granted, South Africa needs to perhaps cash in anyway and enjoy the World Cup while it’s here.
