Barcelona star Samuel Eto’o was unveiled on Friday as the face of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
Fifa president Sepp Blatter on Friday launched the poster for the first tournament to be staged in Africa.
An image of the Cameroon striker about to head a football, his face and neck superimposed on a map of Africa, will form the centrepiece of the publicity campaign for the tournament.
The 2010 World Cup is due to kick off in South Africa on 11 June.
« You will have no problem to recognise first of all that it’s Africa and you have the face of one of the most popular and well-known faces of the continent, » Blatter told reporters.
« He was not able to participate in the last World Cup but what is more important here is to give this continent a face, a human face in football, » he said ahead of Sunday’s draw for the qualifying rounds.
Eto’o was only 17 when he appeared in the 1998 tournament in France but the « Indomitable Lions » failed to qualify for the last World Cup in Germany.
The former African player of the year has been the target of racist chanting in Spain where he has also played for Real Madrid and Real Mallorca.
The 2010 World Cup organisers also revealed that South Africans will get cheap tickets to watch the 2010 World Cup on home soil.
South Africa’s 2010 Local Organising Committee chairman Danny Jordaan said the special tickets were an attempt to make watching the finals as accessible as possible to South Africa’s population, more than half of whom live below the poverty line.
