I have just spent close to forty days in South Africa and the 2010 World Cup experience.
Lessons learned have been plenty and in no particular order, this is what I have come away with.
1. FIFA has no regard for the fans' budget. Please play all first round matches within the same city. If you followed England for instance, you went from Rustenburg-to-Cape Town-to-Port Elizabeth. That is nonsense.
2. When you design a new ball, have the players that will have to play with it, test it first ... sounds like a no brainer, huh!
3. Shorten the tournament -- a month is far too long. Perhaps the World Cup should be 16 teams and not 32. When was the last great 32-team World Cup?
4. South Africa is a fantastic place to visit and the locals can be proud of the job they did and the hospitality they displayed.
5. Don't go to South Africa unless you are prepared to drive on the wrong side of the road because getting around is a huge challenge. Taxi drivers have had a laugh!
6. Brazil 2014, please do not let FIFA bully you into only serving Budweiser at the stadiums. Give the fans a choice; they are not simpletons.
7. Nike should wait until after the tournament to do their marketing campaign. Everyone they pimped, stank!
8. Video replays and goal line technology must be in place and be a standard part of football.
9. Only referees who have officiated 'big' matches should be allowed on the pitch. I'm sorry but the Guatemalan Cup Final doesn't count.
10. The World Cup is now a poor cousin to the UEFA Champions League in terms of the quality of football.
11. Fans should no longer have to jump through hoops or break the bank for tickets. The system in place was useless for Africans who did not have Internet access or the means to buy extortionately high-priced tickets.
12. Feigning injury should be punished with a 5-10 minute sin bin. It's getting very embarrassing and has to stop.
13. World Cups should only be played in the summer. It was freezing most of the time in South Africa. Seriously, it's not a World Cup without women wearing bikinis, especially next time in Brazil.
14. FIFA needs to stop catering to the corporate junket. These people add nothing to a football match. They are simply tourists who don't pay.
15. African meat is sensational and the fresh oysters in Cape Town are in a league of their own.
16. Players should not have to run miles to collect loose balls on the pitch. That is what ball boys are for.
17. South Africa is not as dangerous as the press made out. You just have to have your wits about you.
18. Arjen Robben and Wesley Sneijder may be follically challenged however they are superb footballers.
19. Germany did England a favor by wiping the floor with them. This is a team to be reckoned with.
20. If there is a camera crew with action rolling, FIFA President Sepp Blatter must surely be close by.
21. In terms of pure football, this was, undoubtedly, the worst World Cup ever.
22. Do not fly the day of a semifinal because either FIFA or celebrities will tie up the airport forcing you to circle the venue for hours and then arrive with just minutes to go in the match.
23. Do we really have to build fences around stadiums forcing real fans to march miles so corporate fat cats don't have to breathe the same air?
24. Diego Forlan may have failed at Manchester United but he proved to the world that he is a fantastic footballer.
25. African teams still aren't as good as advertised.
26. Vuvuzelas must never be allowed near a World Cup game again. Fine for television, terrible for eardrums.
27. The 2010 World Cup emphasized the death (temporarily, of course) of the individual. This was a team World Cup like never before. Individuals with reputations (Kaka, Rooney, Messi, Torres) were more style than substance, whereas teams (Germany, Spain, Holland) were fashioned with a winning mentality.
28. Fans should be able to buy as many tickets as they want. Having a rule that no fan can buy more than seven during the tournament is crazy if, as was the case at South Africa 2010, there were unsold tickets and empty seats.
29. The third-place match should be in the same city as the final (as it was in most of the previous World Cups). Put the match in Port Elizabeth by all means, but don't moan if there are empty seats. Had Germany-Uruguay been staged at Soccer City or Ellis Park, it would have been a sell-out.
30. Soccer City is a stadium worthy of hosting the World Cup final. No stadium with fewer than 90,000 seats should be allowed to host future World Cup final matches.
31. FIFA should be banned from block-booking all of the best hotels in World Cup cities. it drives prices up, creates artificially high demand, and most of these hotel rooms end up empty anyway.
32. FIFA now has to realize that it must provide value for money concerning hospitality. Charge high prices and you will get empty hospitality seats, as was the case at a virtually all of the World Cup 2010 matches.
33. If you want cheap memorabilia, get it on the streets of Johannesburg -- and not inside the stadiums.
34. Occasionally FIFA does get something right, and bringing the World Cup to Africa has turned out to be an inspired move.
35. If you stay with locals, and the World Cup is in winter, make sure they have heating in the bedrooms.
36. The fans should reclaim the World Cup. FIFA has standardized the tournament to such an extent that atmospheres around the stadium are diminishing, choices inside the stadium are limited (certainly in terms of food, drink and merchandise), and tickets are becoming more increasingly difficult to acquire. Also, Dutch women should be allowed to wear whatever they want for matches, even if it upsets a sponsor or two.
37. Make the the third-place match the de facto final. The third-place match is always better than the final. Award gold medals to the winners of the third-place match and bronze medals to the winners of the final.
38. The opening ceremony of the World Cup finals in Soccer City was pants -- the closing ceremony in Soccer City kicked butt.
39. Black, white, brown, yellow, blue -- we are all tied together by the majesty that is football.
40. Nelson Mandela is the most awe-inspiring person I have ever been privileged to be in the presence of -- thank you Nelson, and thank you South Africa.
Nick Webster is a senior writer for FoxSoccer.com.
