World Cup organizers Tuesday urged fans to leave early for the tournament's June 11 kick-off, saying they feared a “nightmare” traffic situation following two dress rehearsal matches. Jerome Valcke, general secretary of football governing body FIFA, said fans should arrive at least an hour early for the 2 P.M. (1200 GMT) opening ceremony ahead of the tournament's first match between South Africa and Mexico. “We must and we have to start this World Cup with a full stadium. It would be sad if the stadium is (only) full by the time Bafana Bafana already scored two goals against Mexico,” Valcke told reporters following the final pre-World Cup meeting of South Africa's organising committee. Highways leading to the 94,700-seat Soccer City, venue for the opening and final matches, were jammed with more than five kilometers of traffic Thursday as fans made their way to a friendly between the national team and Colombia. Johannesburg officials said Friday that private cars would be blocked from World Cup stadiums to ease traffic. To get inside the 800m security perimeter around stadiums, fans will have to take park-and-ride buses or enter on foot. Dream come true The World Cup in 10 days time will fulfill a dream that began with the release of Nelson Mandela from an apartheid jail in 1990, chief local organizer Danny Jordaan said Tuesday. Jordaan told a news conference that Africa's first edition of soccer's biggest tournament was the culmination of a journey that began with Mandela's release and then the first multi-racial elections in 1994. “When Nelson Mandela walked out of the prison, we were all debating the kind of South Africa that we will create from 1990 onwards and as we sit in 2010 and we see the arrival of the teams, we can say truly this is the kind of South Africa we hoped for, that we dreamed of,” he said. FIFA President Sepp Blatter joined in the hyperbole. “This first African FIFA World Cup will be a big page in the history of humanity, not only in the history of sport,” the head of soccer's governing body said in a statement after a meeting of the World Cup organising committee.
