Johannesburg - The Local Organising Committee (LOC) on Thursday urged South Africans to rally behind Ghana as the West African country takes on the United States in one of the crucial last sixteen matches on Saturday.
At the same time, FIFA called on South Africans to continue supporting the tournament which is set to boost the country's credibility to host major events.
"We have always said that this is an African world cup and in the spirit of that statement we are appealing to South Africans to support an African team, we are indeed very proud of Ghana," LOC spokesperson Rich Mkhondo said.
"We are supporting Ghana and we are doing so because this is an African world cup and Ghana is really making us proud," he said.
Despite losing to Germany on Wednesday night, Ghana managed to find a place in the last 16, thanks to Australia who beat Serbia in another Group D match.
While this week saw an early exit of the national team Bafana Bafana, organisers have continued to highlight the legacy of the event for South Africa.
Apart from several infrastructure investments, the tournament is expected to inject an estimated R93-billion to local economy.
Preliminary figures released this week indicated that spending by international visitors were close to a billion rand in the first week.
"What we are emphasising now is that South is proving to have an ability to host any major event...we have received accolades from all over the world and we are happy with how things are unfolding," said Mkhondo.
The early exit of African teams from the tournament is not seen as a failure but an "admission" that there still some challenges, he said. FIFA spokesperson Nicolas Maingot also emphasised the need for South Africans to continue supporting the tournament until 11 July when only one team will be crowned champions.
"The reality of the world cup is that there can be only one winner, and we would like to urge all the Bafana fans to remain behind the tournament as they have been since it started. It is that unique spirit that belongs to the world cup and we fully trust that the people of South Africa will continue doing so," Maingot said.
He said football development in Africa after the world cup, remained key priority for the world football governing body.
Meanwhile, FIFA is expecting about two million TV viewers world-wide to be glued on their screens when Paraguay faces New Zealand at Peter Mokaba Stadium this afternoon.
The teams have only met once before during a friendly in 1995 in a match that ended in a narrow 3-2 success to Paraguay.
More than 6000 tickets for the Ghana/USA match will be available in all sales channels while 1000 will be on sale for the clash between England and Germany.
