After months of negativity, it was incredibly refreshing to hear some positive attitudes towards thethis week - as over half the coaches for June's finals trekked to Sun City for a pre-tournament workshop.
Perhaps it was fitting that in South Africa's most famous casino resort, once a den of in iniquity nicknamed Sin City due its controversial past, the chat turned to the rarely-spoken enthusiasm for Africa's first World Cup rather than the regular doom-laden diet.
The latter is largely fuelled by both South Africa's terrible crime levels, with an average of 50 murders per day, and the ubiquitous 'Will they be ready?' stories that precede every major championship in a not-quite-as-developed-as-we'd-like location.
But is South Africa really that foreign a destination?
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You might have thought African teams would have learned the lessons from the 2006 World Cup. Just four months before that tournament began in Germany, disbelief reigned as Togo (always Togo, it seems) fired their coach.
The decision was contentious for many reasons. Above all, it left the new man in charge with the blink of an eye to prepare for the finals. Otto Pfister, who only met his squad the month before the World Cup, had just two weeks to work with players he barely knew before naming his squad - a conundrum that takes most coaches years rather than days.
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Egypt coach Hassan Shehata may find he's exceptionally popular over the next few months - not so much because he'll be permanently swimming in a sea of congratulations, more because the world's leading coaches may want to pick his brain.
For the wily 60-year-old beat no less than four - Nigeria, Cameroon, Algeria and Ghana - of Africa's six World Cup finalists en route to winning January's . And Nigeria, who have since , are pursuing the 'if you can't beat them, join them' route, with Shehata now wanted for one of football's hottest jobs. .
Given Amodu's dismissal and Nigeria's unconvincing displays, we probably learnt less about the than any of the five World Cup finalists. , , yet and , Nigeria's Nations Cup display was nowhere near capacity.
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Unlike previous tournaments, this was not so much a 'football festival' and far more, it often seemed, a three-week advert for hosts Angola.
After the final, I asked the local organising committee's executive director whether the 2010 Nations Cup would be remembered for the football or , to which Antonio Mangueira replied 'the football and we had some wonderful fireworks too'.
Fireworks were not going to make anyone forget Cabinda - unless they had happened on the pitch of course which, by and large, they didn't.
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Born in Wimbledon, my enthusiasm for the global game was already sizeable before the tragic demise of the boys from SW19. Having covered football in over 50 countries, I've been working in the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s African sports section since the early noughties, recently spending three years in Africa to report on the run-up to the continent's first World Cup.
