Yes, I predict, a little round ball is going to bring the world economy crashing down over the next few weeks. Forget the Green tragedy or the US oil spill or the Thailand political timebomb, it’s the 2010 FIFA World Cup the business world has to fear the most.

Just this morning, as I was writing this, I received an email from someone, saying, “Bit blur as watched WC concert till 5am.”

This from a grown woman so it’s not only the entire male population of the world that will be caught up in soccer mania but the other better half too.

“Join me at Paulaner’s 2.30am,” said Nino Gruttke, ITB Asia’s project director, the other day. “German’s playing.” I finally got a date from this handsome young man but it’s to watch a ball game. Man.

Yes, out here in the East, the dawn will be full of cheers and beer but the days will be hazy as workers go about their work half-asleep.

Productivity will plunge to new lows, currencies will go into free fall – some may even go extinct like the Euro – and millions of customers still waiting for their iPads out here in the East will have to wait longer as production lines slow down in China.

In the middle of a Skype conversation, while chatting about, I believe, yet another world-changing device that will revolutionise the way people behave, let alone travel – I think it was the iPhone G4 – Kevin May, editor of TNooz, sent me the entire World Cup schedule.

Adrian Currie, chairman of Agoda, told me he was on a flight from New Zealand to Johannesburg to catch the action. I can’t wait to hear from him what he thinks of the vuvuzela.

Apparently it’s already whipped up a lot of noise in the blogosphere. The plastic noise-maker, which looks like a cut-off elephant trunk, is a uniquely African way of cheering on their teams.

“Going into a stadium without a vuvuzela is like going to war and being unarmed,” says Petey Mthethwa, a worker from Lumoss Mouldings, a vuvuzela-manufacturing company in Johannesburg, in a report in ABC News.

Other fans are finding it downright annoying, however, and some have called for a ban.

In fact, one London doctor says the instrument could spread cold and flu germs and with the flu season in full swing in South Africa in full swing, she fears it could cause “health issues.

“Vuvuzelas have the potential to spread colds and flu as a lot of breath goes through the vuvuzela,” said Dr Ruth McNerney of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Great, not only will the world economy come crashing down, we will also have a flu epidemic on our hands.

Ah, little round ball, what havoc you wreak …

Featured image credit (Image of stadium with lights and flashes): Ockra/iStock