Months away from the big kick-off, this is what Fabio and the boys have to look forward to.

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The disconcerting sight of diggers, breeze blocks and bone-dry pitches awaits Fabio Capello when he arrives for an inspection of England’s planned World Cup base today, only 108 days before the tournament in South Africa begins.

Capello, having flown overnight to Johannesburg, is due to travel with FA officials to the Royal Bafokeng Sports Campus near Rustenburg this afternoon to approve formally the site as England’s base for the tournament. But the £20 million hotel and training complex — which, while five-star, is markedly less ostentatious than the venue selected in Baden-Baden by Sven-Göran Eriksson for the 2006 World Cup in Germany — remains a long way from completion.

The FA, having sent a party to Rustenburg in advance of Capello’s arrival, played down concerns last night about the progress made. Officials maintain that the England manager has been kept informed about every stage of the operation and is aware of what to expect. His priority today will be to assess the condition of the pitches; Capello said, after his last inspection in December, that they were poor enough to force him to consider alternative venues.

The expectation is that Capello will give Royal Bafokeng the thumbs-up, but the first impressions of British journalists who were shown around the complex yesterday — billed as “a world-class high-altitude sports training destination” — were that the Royal Marang Hotel still looks a building site. With the pitches scorched by the late-summer sun and the on-site medical centre not built, there is a lot of work to do on a project that was originally scheduled to be finished by November. It is now due for completion next month.

Riaan Welman, the front of house manager for the resort, said: “They [are] pushing it forward. We can do a room in half a day and a lot of them have equipment ready now.” Capello identified several sites before the tournament — all of them at an altitude of at least 1,000 metres to condition the players — but, after competition from other countries, he settled on Rustenburg as the No 1 choice, with a back-up in Pretoria.

The Royal Bafokeng Sports Campus lies 15 miles north of Rustenburg, just off the R565, an otherwise anonymous dual carriageway. The remote location, near the foot of the Magaliesberg mountain range, held an appeal for Capello, who was eager to avoid the kind of environment England’s players endured in 2006, when many of their families stayed in Baden-Baden, a situation that Rio Ferdinand later called a “circus”.

The surrounding areas are notable primarily for a number of platinum mines, although Sun City, South Africa’s answer to Las Vegas, is only a 20-minute drive away. Capello will head there today for a pre-World Cup coaching conference.

The FA is close to finalising England’s warm-up programme for the World Cup. In addition to the friendly against Egypt on March 3, Capello’s team are expected to announce games against Mexico at Wembley on May 24 and against Japan in Austria on May 29. (Times Online)

There appear to be some very real concerns about the upcoming World Cup and whilst its always a danger to over egg the media pudding and many would rather we just see what happens ‘on the night’ there will be many out there wondering just how much of a disaster the 2010 World Cup could be.

Clearly it was time Africa was given the duty of hosting the showpiece tournament but that doesn’t excuse the apparent delays that threaten to derail the event before its even began. Safety fears are also prevalent as well as other procedural headaches that come with such a large undertaking as this is set to be.

Fingers crossed everything will go according to plan and all these fears will be allayed because if they are not then you can expect the media to waste no time pointing out any deficiencies.

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