World Cup teams' hotel demands
NZPA
Last updated 21:44 28/05/2010
The New Zealand team set to compete in the soccer world cup in South Africa has chosen to live in eight houses worth over 8 million rand ($NZ1.5m) each on the Serengeti Golf Estate.
The All Whites will play Serbia at Klagenfurt this weekend, and then cross the Austrian border to take on Slovenia in Maribor on June 4.
From there, the squad will travel to their World Cup base, the Serengeti Golf and Wildlife Estate, which is on the outskirts of Johannesburg.
It boasts 18-hole and nine-hole golf courses designed by Jack Nicklaus.
Organisers say the All Whites would like some of their players to take golf lessons while the team are at the World Cup, South Africa's Sunday Times reported.
But the NZ attitude paled in comparison to that of Argentina's football administrators who asked staff at the University of Pretoria's High Performance Centre - the team's base for the World Cup - to replace the standard wash basins, toilet bowls and cisterns in the two bathrooms reserved for the football legend because they would not meet his "high standards".
The centre hastily replaced these on last week with fancy Eurosmart taps, basin mixers, dark wood vanity cabinets, and new toilet bowls, including a special bidet with two settings for coach Maradona's bedroom.
The Pretoria centre's chief operations officer, Colin Stier, said: "They felt that it (the basins and toilet bowls) were not up to Maradona's standards."
The Argentine football association's other requests included painting the rooms white and buying six PlayStations for players to use during their free time, and feeding the team 10 hot dishes a day as well as 14 different salads, three different pasta sauces, and at least three puddings with each meal.
Kaka and his Brazilian teammates - at The Fairway hotel - have asked for "hot hot coffee, hot hot coffee and hot hot coffee", a lot of cookies - and no chocolate, said the hotel's marketing assistant, Ariska van der Westhuizen. They also asked for the hotel pool to be heated to exactly 32degC and that it be covered.
The Italian team are taking its own pasta for their stay at the Leriba Lodge and has had a high-speed fibre-optic cable had been laid so that the team can watch Italian TV channels.
The Slovakian team - who the All Whites play on June 15 in Rustenburg - asked only for two ping pong tables and an electronic dartboard.
New Zealand will play a training game against Chile, another of the World Cup participants, on June 9.
Then the real action gets under way for the All Whites six days later, when they play their first group F game against Slovakia in Rustenburg. New Zealand will face Italy in Nelspruit on June 20 before taking on Paraguay in Polokwane on June 24.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/sport/football/3752721/World-Cup-teams-hotel-demands