With the World Cup well and truly underway and us still lacking a TV of our own, we spent the weekend in a lodge crucially with a bar and a widescreen TV. On Friday we watched the French play out a tedious draw with Uruguay, but at least the bar was full of Bafana Bafana fans still revelling in the excitement of the match with Mexico. Saturday was a day of pure World Cup. We watched the South Koreans demolish Greece, Argentina threaten to demolish Nigeria and then came the one we’d been waiting for; England vs USA. We were back in the bar but sadly the atmosphere was really lacking. There were 3 people there, not including us or the barman. There’s something really depressing, not to mention incredibly annoying about a single Vuvuzela being blown inside a bar with a total of 6 people. Still, we stuck it out and watched England scrape a draw with a team they were widely expected to beat. England World Cup business as usual then.
Today, in order to size up England’s next opponents we went to Polokwane to see if we could get some last minute tickets for Slovenia vs Algeria. We were in luck as we managed to get our hands on 2 of the last 10000! Next we had to get to the stadium which meant negotiating the Park and Ride service. The bus ride to the stadium was our first experience up close with the South African fans and it made us realise what makes this world cup an African one.
I’ll let the video do the talking, but then please compare it to the one below of some typical English fans efforts at singing. Perhaps if they could harmonise like the South African fans they would enjoy a better reputation overseas…
Translated this means “Block them left, block them right, down with Slovenia!” (just in case you thought they were cheering for the Europeans)
Personally I thought the tenors were early…
The other fascinating thing about the fans was that they were throwing all their support behind a team from the opposite end of the huge continent of Africa with whom they share neither religion, colour, culture nor a common (recent) history. It was a real demonstration of Africa United. I can’t imagine England fans ever cheering on Germany or France under similar circumstances, or vice versa. Still for all the South African support and tinnitus-inducing Vuvuzelas the Algerians lost out to Slovenia who now top group C. Bring on Friday night and lets hope England can emulate Slovenia’s success!
