In honour of The World's Most Uptight Stadium Security Guard (scroll down), I present to you another photograph I illegally took at the Confed Cup opening game. Note how there are some empty seats (which the South African press - having run out of real news - can't stop talking about).
Here's my take on the empty seats scenario: the Confed Cup is, ultimately, a World Cup dress rehearsal – and by "dress rehearsal" I mean "preview where 24 teams are missing, and where teams that are too weak to qualify for the World Cup (Iraq, New Zealand, you know who you are) manage to sneak in through the back door". The 2010 World Cup will not have so many empty seats, if only for that reason.
Oh, and please ignore the idiot South African locals who talk about the Fifa World Cup in the same breath as the Cricket or Rugby World Cup. A soccer match between the 10th and 11th best-ranked teams in the world would be France vs Portugal... which would be a repeat of the last World Cup Semifinal, and which would be sell-out anywhere. The cricket equivalent would be Zimbabwe vs Ireland (remembering that only 9 countries play Test cricket), and the rugby equivalent would be Scotland vs Samoa... which nobody would go watch anywhere.