Ghana will play South American world cup finalists Uruguay in an international friendly on 03 March next year as part of the festivities to open a new stadium for the tournament according to the Mbombela Municipality.
The Mbombela Stadium which is one of the newly-built in Nelspruit, Ghana's camping base for the mundial, will host four Group matches including the Group D clash between Australia and Serbia on 23 June.
''That will also be part of the celebrations as we (South Africa) will be 100 days from hosting the World Cup,'' said Ronny Moyo, the municipality's 2010 unit marketing chief.
"We are over the moon that two global soccer giants will play at our new stadium as part of their preparations for the 2010 World Cup. "We want to have small games to test the stadium prior to the March 3 game. We have four municipalities taking part in a sports festival on February 26 to 28.
"The municipalities, which are from South Africa, Swaziland and Mozambique are Mbombela, Mbabane, Matola and Nkomazi. "The construction of this world- class stadium is complete.
In fact, we are busy with the lawn after we realised that it was laid on the wrong soil -25 percent of the turf supplied had been grown in clay, which was not too bad but we could not run the risk of having the stadium flooded in the event that it rained."
Ghana play Australia, Serbia and Germany in Group D of the finals which begins on 10 June. Uruguay, winners of the inaugural World Cup which they hosted in 1930, are in Group A with Bafana Bafana, France and Mexico.
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