Johannesburg — THOUSANDS of tickets to Bafana Bafana matches at the 2010 World Cup remain unsold as the nation's soccer lovers continue to turn their backs on the ailing national team.

The startling revelation was made by Danny Jordaan - the CEO of the of the World Cup local organising committee - yesterday amid fears that SA was edging dangerously close to becoming the first hosts to be outnumbered by foreign sides' fans when the global showpiece gets under way on June 11.

A visibly worried Jordaan said they were becoming increasingly concerned as, with Fifa's deadline for the third ticketing sale phase set for January 22, Bafana group matches are still not even in the top 10 best- selling games in the tournament.

"People are just not buying tickets to Bafana Bafana matches," Jordaan said yesterday. "In previous World Cups, the host nation has always been among the teams selling tickets the fastest. But it is certainly not the case here and we have to be worried by what is happening.

"Obviously we have a lot of work to do and it will be tragic if this trend continues. I appeal to fans to come out and support their country."

Jordaan said SA was not the only African nation struggling to shift tickets as the continent's other representatives at the global showpiece - Côte d'Ivoire, Algeria, Nigeria, Cameroon and Ghana - were also struggling.

"So far fewer than 100 000 tickets have been sold to fans in the six African countries.

"As things stand, we are less than satisfied with the sale of tickets because there has been very little interest shown in Africa."

After a woeful 2009 that ended with the sacking of disastrous Brazilian coach Joel Natalino Santana, South Africans are seemingly far from convinced that tickets to Bafana matches will be money well spent at the World Cup.

Another contributing factor for the slow sales could be the ticketing process that fans have to go through to purchase tickets.

Fans have complained that Fifa's format of filling in application forms and then submitting the completed documents to First National Bank branches around the country was too complicated to comprehend after years of purchasing tickets over the counter. And as many traditional soccer lovers have limited access to the internet, the alternative of applying online on the Fifa website was always going to be underutilised. Many still claim that they are put off by what they have to go through to get tickets.

Turning to other matters, Jordaan said he was astonished by reports that German Football League president Reinhard Rauball and his German Football Federation counterpart, Theo Zwanziger, had questioned the safety of the World Cup and said: "We can't simply say that SA is something else than Angola" after Friday's terrorist attack on the Togo national team.

"We have not received any calls from any person or anyone, including the German presidents," Jordaan said. "We did not condemn Germany when there were bombings in Kosovo and in Spain (in 2004) ahead of the Soccer World Cup they hosted in 2006. All I am saying is that people have to be consistent. Safety and security is an ongoing matter that must always be subjected to rigorous review all the time.

"That is why our government has invested over R1,3bn on security alone. We are very comfortable that we will deliver a safe and secure World Cup," Jordaan said.

The South African Police Service will spend R640m on the deployment of officers specifically for the event and police numbers will be increased by 55 000 to 200 000.

South African military health service surgeon, Lt-Gen Vijay Ramlakan, said they had been working on a plan for the past four years and were not about to be shaken from their goal by alarmists.

"It is not the habit of the military to discuss security issues in the media," he said.

"We benchmarked our plans with South Korea and Japan (2002 World Cup) and Germany (2006) and I can say our level of security is higher than the three countries.

"We have spent a lot of money developing systems that will counter this global threat (terrorism)."

Jordaan said SA had hosted more than 147 events since 1994 and they were all without incident.