MOSSEL Bay has become the first Garden Route town to officially secure a base-camp team for the 2010 Fifa World Cup following the qualification of Paraguay earlier this week.

The town’s 2010 co-ordinator, Louis Harris, who attended the match at the invitation of the Paraguayan Football Federation, said they had beaten Argentina 1-0, drawing level with Brazil at 30 points each.

“It is now two hours after the game and the city is celebrating with fireworks and cars hooting all the time. The passion for the game is just unbelievable,” Harris told colleagues in a letter on Wednesday night.

He said arrangements for the base camp were being finalised. “We are already in an advanced stage of planning, with work progressing quickly on our new Fifa-standard pitch, which is being built on the Extension 23 community fields.

“Through our 2010 Community Forum, we’ve also begun negotiations with various bodies in government and the private sector, ranging from the police to paramedics and the taxi associations. And we are well on track to meet our target of making at least 400 locals conversant in Spanish so that we can properly host the team and their supporters.”

Realising the language barrier was one of the biggest stumbling blocks to attracting South American teams and tourists, Mossel Bay launched a language faculty in conjunction with the University of Buenos Aires. The town can now expect more than 6000 Paraguayan supporters in 2010.