Stadiums in progress, money rolling in, says 2010 chief

LONDON, May 9 (Reuters) South Africa 2010 chief Danny Jordaan said today he had no worries over his country's progress towards hosting the World Cup.

FIFA president Sepp Blatter said recently that contingency plans for a last-minute switch had been made, although he added that he was in no doubt that South Africa would be ready.

''It is because of Sepp Blatter that we are hosting the World Cup,'' Jordaan told reporters at the Soccerex business and football conference at Wembley Stadium.

''Without him bringing in a rotation policy it would have been very hard for us.

''He said that Plan A is South Africa, Plan B is South Africa and Plan C is South Africa....he just stated that in case of a natural disaster they would look elsewhere but our country has no history of natural disasters so they won't need to.'' Jordaan said work on all five new stadiums to be built had started, including the 68,000-seater Green Point stadium in Cape Town that was delayed by local protests.

The other new stadia are in Port Elisabeth, Durban, Polokwane and Nelspruit while five existing stadia are being upgraded, including the FNB and Ellis Park in Johannesburg.

Jordaan pointed to the huge financial backing for the tournament as further proof that confidence was high in South Africa successfully hosting Africa's first World Cup finals.

''FIFA has already generated for the World Cup in South Africa the highest revenue ever, 3.2 billion dollar. It's the highest in the history of the World Cup,'' he said.

''South African companies have also committed 100 million dollar to the event...it's higher than what local companies committed in 2002 in South Korea and Japan.

''If major multi-nationals and South African companies are investing in the World Cup surely they have done their homework.

The notion that we must consider something else does not make sense.'' Jordaan believes most of the scepticism is coming from people who have never been to South Africa.

''The issue is consistently arising since we won the vote in 2004...it's based on the views of people who have never been to our country,'' he said.

''If I have never seen Chelsea play I cannot be in a position to express a view on whether they are good or bad.

''We want this event to be a huge success. we owe that to our former president Nelson Mandela who spent a huge amount of energy pursuing this dream, we owe it to archbishop Desmond Tutu, we owe it President Thabo Mbeki and we owe it to so many South Africans. It's not something we are flippant about.'' REUTERS TB HS2129