"Roll on 2010, says Mbeki," said the Johannesburg-based daily, The Star, quoting the country's president Thabo Mbeki in an interview in Germany where he attended the official handover.

"It is a challenging thing, but it will be done," Mbeki told The Star after a local news report a week ago questioned South Africa's ability to stage the event, saying that FIFA had a back-up plan to move it to Australia.

"There's some people... within South Africa who think they've got a permanent job to paint a negative image of South Africa," Mbeki said.

"I suspect they are people who essentially were not happy that apartheid came to an end and that South Africa became a democratic country," he added.

The Star in its sport pages paid tribute to Italy, while slating France's Zinedine Zidane for head-butting Marco Materazzi.

"On the night when the Azzuri moved to make a mockery of the match-fixing scandal that is threatening to destroy their top status as a footballing nation, Zinedine Zidane contrived to render all he's given to the game useless," the paper said.

"South Africa in the spotlight," a Business Day newspaper headline said, "as the curtain came down on the 2006 FIFA World Cup, world attention shifted to South Africa ... amid scepticism whether the country will be ready -- and an insistence by government that the 2010 version will be the best ever."

"Viva Italia!" the daily The Citizen said in a banner headline while on its back page ran a picture of Zidane looking at the sky saying "France pay the penalty."

The Sowetan, which has a mainly black readership, ran a picture on its front page saying "Mamma mia!"