Cape Town — NEW Zealand are fast-becoming the darlings of world football. Like a young brother that is not big enough to be threatening but fun to play with, every other country wanted to have them in their World Cup groups.

In the build-up to the draw on Friday, the hosts in particular were convinced it would have been second time lucky -not after landing the All Blacks in the FIFA Confederations Cup and making easy work of them for a 2-0 convincing win in the group stages.

"We wanted New Zealand, but we're not the only ones. Maybe it's just because I like New Zealand and we can do better than our rugby team," a Nigerian journalist stated.

To Nigeria and the rest of the African lot, who wouldn't want to face a side with an amateur league and a country with only one professional team?

As it turned out, Nigeria just like Ivory Coast, South Africa, Ghana, Algeria and Cameroon will need to engage second gear to guarantee progress from their potentially tricky groups.

The draw disappoint ment aside, South Africa staged a slick and glitzy ceremony on Friday for the World Cup draw and Nelson Mandela said his country was humbled to host the soccer spectacular for the first time on the continent.

Africa's biggest economy has shrugged off persistent scepticism about its ability to stage the world's most watched sporting event and it pulled out all the stops for the draw, which will decide the first round matches among the 32 teams.

Organisers fielded three Nobel Prize winners including Mandela, Africa's most respected statesman, while its famous actress, Oscar winner Charlize Theron, hosted the draw.