FA plays down concerns over Englands unprepared World Cup bottom in Rustenburg

Oliver Kay, Football Correspondent, Rustenburg & , : {}

The disconcerting steer of diggers, zephyr blocks and bone-dry pitches awaits Fabio Capello when he arrives for an investigation of Englands programmed World Cup bottom today, usually 108 days prior to the contest in South Africa begins.

Capello, carrying flown overnight to Johannesburg, is due to transport with FA officials to the Royal Bafokeng Sports Campus nearby Rustenburg this afternoon to authorize rigourously the site as Englands bottom for the tournament. But the �20 million road residence and precision formidable which, whilst five-star, is considerably less magnificent than the venue comparison in Baden-Baden by Sven-Göran Eriksson for the 2006 World Cup in Germany stays a prolonged approach from completion.

The FA, carrying sent a celebration to Rustenburg in allege of Capellos arrival, played down concerns last night about the swell made. Officials say that the England physical education instructor has been kept sensitive about each theatre of the operation and is wakeful of what to expect. His priority currently will be to cruise the condition of the pitches; Capello said, after his last investigation in December, that they were bad sufficient to force him to cruise pick venues.

The expectancy is that Capello will give Royal Bafokeng the thumbs-up, but the initial impressions of British reporters who were shown around the formidable yesterday billed as a world-class high-altitude sports precision end were that the Royal Marang Hotel still looks a construction site. With the pitches destroyed by the late-summer object and the on-site healing centre not built, there is a lot of work to do on a plan that was creatively scheduled to be accomplished by November. It is right afar due for execution subsequent month.

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Riaan Welman, the front of residence physical education instructor for the resort, said: They [are] pulling it forward. We can do a room in half a day and a lot of them have apparatus ready now. Capello identified multiform sites prior to the contest all of them at an rise of at slightest 1,000 metres to condition the players but, after foe from alternative countries, he staid on Rustenburg as the No 1 choice, with a fill-in in Pretoria.

The Royal Bafokeng Sports Campus lies fifteen miles north of Rustenburg, usually off the R565, an differently unknown twin carriageway. The remote location, nearby the feet of the Magaliesberg towering range, hold an interest for Capello, who was fervent to equivocate the kind of sourroundings Englands players endured in 2006, when most of their family groups stayed in Baden-Baden, a incident that Rio Ferdinand after called a circus.

The surrounding areas are important essentially for a series of gold mines, nonetheless Sun City, South Africas answer to Las Vegas, is usually a 20-minute expostulate away. Capello will head there currently for a pre-World Cup coaching conference.

The FA is close to finalising Englands warm-up programme for the World Cup. In further to the accessible opposite Egypt on Mar 3, Capellos group are approaching to make known games opposite Mexico at Wembley on May twenty-four and opposite Japan in Austria on May 29.