WITH the World Cup only a year away, football fans around the globe might be asking: is South Africa ready to host the best sporting event the world has ever seen?

Mailsport’s Jonathan Fernandez spoke to Fifa development o cer Windsor John Paul and he says to expect the unexpected.

WHAT’S plastic, a metre long, brightly coloured and sounds like an elephant? It’s the vuvuzela — the noise-making trumpet of South African football fans, and it’s come to symbolise the sport in the country. It’s an instrument, but not always a musical one.

Describing the atmosphere in a stadium packed with thousands of fans blowing their vuvuzelas is difficult. Up close it’s an elephant, sure, but en masse the sound is more like a massive swarm of very angry bees.

THE World Cup is just a year away and all works are still in motion. Hosting the prestigious event will surely go down as one of the proudest achievements by an African country.

South Africa is on all fours to make the World Cup a successful one. They are striving towards making all the stadiums and facilities to be nothing less than state-of-the-art.

And according to Windsor, operations are almost flawless as they finalised the preparations for the 10 stadiums which will be utilised.

AN AVERAGE of 50 murders are committed each day in South Africa, a nation which has one of the highest crime rates. But Windsor John Paul is adamant that security will not be compromised during the World Cup.

“There will be 41,000 officers deployed for the 2010 World Cup. A lot of money has been spent for reinforcements and equipment just to ensure that the World Cup will be free of any security threats,“ said Windsor.

IF the Dutch cricket team could turn the tables on mighty England at the Twenty20 World Cup yesterday, can the Kazakhs even dream of doing it?