Miscommunication is plaguing preparations for the 2010 Fifa World Cup.

This was highlighted when Irvin Khoza, chairman of the Local Organising Committee, identified the Royal Bafokeng Stadium this week as “on red” as a Confederations Cup venue.

Yet when contacted by the Sunday Times, Niall Carroll, CEO of Royal Bafokeng Holdings, reacted strongly. “What you are saying has not been communicated to us,” he said. “This perception is unfounded.”

Carroll said the Royal Bafokeng stadium was still expected to host the Nelson Mandela Challenge (against Cameroon in November), a friendly encounter against Norway in March and the opening match of the 2009 British and Irish Lions tour against a Highveld XV next year.

These matches were scheduled to take place before the Confederations Cup and Carroll said it didn’t make sense to him that there was any chance the stadium wouldn’t remain one of the LOC’s and Fifa’s four (or five) designated Confed Cup venues.

But credence was given to Khoza’s comment of the stadium being behind schedule in a presentation on stadium progress given in June to parliament’s education committee by the government’s 2010 unit.

The report, presented by Dan Moyo, acting head of the unit, suggests: “… the delay was 65 days. The estimated completion date was December 15 2008, and the Fifa deadline was December 2008. The unit had met the project team two days previously and a task team had also visited the stadium.

“Half the planned work had been lost and the programme had to be revised… ”

When this was put to Carroll, he said he believed the impression of the stadium upgrade being behind schedule was probably due to a out-of-date project manager’s report.

Adding credence to this view is that the improvements to the stadium are relatively small, and include, according to Carroll, upgrades to change rooms and the stadium’s “innards”, additional seating and the construction of more corporate boxes.

Expecting the stadium to be complete by January 2009 at the latest, he said: “The Lions game next year is going to take place about three weeks before our first Confederations Cup game and there is no hint at all that we aren’t going to be ready for that game or any of the other games we are due to host in the coming year.”