Mandela Carried World Soccer to South Africa

The question is simple: be held this year's World Cup in South Africa had not been involved with Nelson Mandela?

FIFA President Sepp Blatter, thinks not.

"Mandela is the true architect of this World Cup, his presence and delivery made it possible," Blatter said on May 15, 2004 in Zurich to announce the winner of the vote.

As he spoke, Blatter handed him with a smile the World Cup trophy to Mandela gray.

For Mandela, who five years earlier had left the presidency, resigned as president, but continued to enjoy great influence, the decision by FIFA was an exciting confirmation of its leadership. For nearly 10 years after the end of the apartheid regime, the rainbow nation, which had led to democracy, was honored with World Headquarters.

"I felt like a boy of 15 years," said Mandela, at that time 85 years, visibly pleased.

The African National Council (ANC), Mandela's party, vigorously supported the campaign to win the seat of the tournament: he believed that the key to reconcile blacks and whites in South Africa, forging a common identity, could pass for another big moment sport.

A formula and successfully tested when South Africa held its ground in the rugby World 1995, a year after the first democratic elections in the country.

The movie "Invictus", filmed in 2009 by film director and actor Clint Eastwood, recalls the story of how Mandela urged blacks to support the national team's final victory, the "Springboks" (gazelles), as a gesture of goodwill towards the white rugby enthusiasts.

The roles are changed when next year's football team, composed mostly of black, won the African Nations Cup.

In 2000, thanks to Mandela, South Africa had accumulated enough experience to host the World Cup. Despite the personal efforts of Mandela canvassing countries, South Africa was beaten with Germany just resolved a controversial 12-11 vote after Charles Dempsey, the representative of New Zealand, South Africa should support, refrain vote in the last minute.

Four years later, South Africa insisted with a new slogan: "It's time for Africa. South Africa is ready. "

"It's been 28 years since the FIFA opposed a racially divided football and helped inspire the end of apartheid," Mandela recalled, recalling 1976, when the FIFA expelled from its ranks apartheid South Africa, the year after the bloody crushing of student demonstrations in Soweto.

On Robben Island prison in the sea off Cape Town, where he spent 18 of his 27 years behind bars, "football was the only joy for the prisoners," he continued Mandela. That was not quite true. Some prisoners also had fun with rugby or, in the case of Mandela, tennis, gardening and chess.

But football held a special place on the island, as a sport of the black majority. Football matches were played on the island according to the rules of FIFA and prisoners crowded around radios to hear the impact the World Cup.

A number of sporting sanctions which excluded South Africa from all the major tournaments damaged the apartheid state and increased pressure on the regime to negotiate its way out of power.

In February 1990 President Frederik de Klerk announced suddenly that would free Mandela and to unconditionally lift the ban on the ANC.