The Confederations Cup is under way in South Africa. Despite a disappointing result by the home team, a scoreless draw with Iraq, the interest level here is steadily rising. It’s helped that three of the games have been great spectacles in themselves: Spain’s 5-0 demolition of New Zealand, a 4-3 thriller between Brazil and Egypt, and a tense affair between Italy and the U.S., where the World Champions had to come back from a goal down against a U.S. team playing with ten men.
I was in a mall when the festivities began on Sunday, with dancers taking the field for the opening ceremony at Ellis Park in Johannesburg. I walked by an electronics store to find a throng of people lined up outside the entrance watching the show. After a speech by newly elected president Jacob Zuma, the tournament was ready to go.
Back at my hotel I watched the match with a group of hotel employees who had taken a lengthy break to see their team. When it finished scoreless, the sentiments were mixed. The pundits on South Africa’s television station Supersport laid into the much-maligned Joel Santana for coming out too defensively, a sentiment shared by many. The guys I was with bemoaned their team’s bad luck on the day, which included Kagisho Dikgacoi’s goal-bound header being unfortunately cleared off Iraq’s goaline by a teammate. Another person I asked said the blame lay squarely with the team. “We lost it ourselves,” he groaned. “We had the chances but not the goals.”
By the time you read this, South Africa may already be out of the Confederations Cup. It’d be a shame, since it would be great for the tournament to have the local team around. With Bafana’s struggles however, Egypt has jumped to the forefront as the local favorite.
The performance Egypt put in against Brazil showed why the African champions are so well-regarded here. Though they went down 4-3 in the end, the rallying cry was based on how well Hassan Shehata‘s team acquitted themselves against the South Americans. Indeed, the local response to the second day of action here revolved almost entirely around the moral victory for all of Africa brought about by Egypt’s play. The global press will fawn over Brazil at any given opportunity, but the focus in South Africa was all about the performance of “brave, resilient, outstanding Egypt,” as one article in Pretoria News put it the next day.
I caught the Egypt/Brazil match in my hotel, where the onlookers outnumbered the ones for Bafana’s game the previous day. Afterward I headed to Loftus Versfeld to watch Italy take on the United States.
Loftus is first and foremost a rugby stadium and just over two weeks ago it hosted the 2009 Super 14 final between Pretoria’s Bulls and the Chiefs of Hamilton, New Zealand. Built in 1906, the stadium has undergone some renovations recently, with some notable work being done to the roof. The underbelly of the stadium is cavernous, with high ceilings in the brick-walled locker rooms and paths going every which way.
The ends of the stadium are great, with a low, small grandstand giving way to an upper tier that features either luxury seating or offices (I couldn’t determine for sure, but these were all conspicuously empty during the game). It looks a bit like Highbury’s Clock End or the BayArena.
The red brick is all over the stadium, and there are uneven cobbled paths leading around a walkway that climbs to the upper levels. While the paths are wide, the entrance to the pitch is narrow and as it got closer and closer to game time, the walkways began to get congested as fans started streaming into the ground. You access your seats by walking along the pitch, a la the San Siro, and as kickoff approached, the paths quickly clogged up.
Some of the stadiums have not been particularly full so far in the tournament, but the crowd of around 30,000 at Loftus Versfeld was lively and up for the match. Despite the sign, fans were not—to put it mildly—deterred from bringing their vuvuzelas. Depending on your view, these nasal horns are either endearing as part of the local soccer culture or incredibly and incessantly annoying. The noise of the horns carries over onto the television, where it’s rendered as a more or less perpetual buzz.
Indeed, people who are watching the games from TV have written me to ask about the noise: “What the hell is the continuous droning sound?” wrote one of my friends who was aggravated by the fact that the vuvuzelas blare at a constant volume, whether somebody has scored, it’s halftime, or absolutely nothing is going on.
The vuvuzela outcry is mainly coming from those, like my friend, who are watching the tournament abroad. In the stadium, the fans love them. It’s one of those things you bemoan until you actually are able to try it: think laser pointer. On TV the horns conflict with the commentary, among other things, but in the ground the ambient noise is part of the atmosphere. It is undoubtedly less abrasive in person than it is via satellite.
Somebody blew one about three feet from my face as I was rushing around the stadium during the pre-game, and I cursed the thing as my ears rang. Later, though, I enjoyed watching a few guys near my section take turns surprising other members of their group with vuvuzela blasts from incredibly close range. When in Rome, I guess.
Just as the tournament was beginning I read of the contingency plan for police to take over security for the event. It’s hard to make a judgment on something like this without an actual security problem in the stadium taking place, but my experience at Loftus was fine. As usual, there are kinks to work out—somebody tells you to go the wrong way, doesn’t let you into a place you think you’re supposed to be, or you turn the corner into a fence—but you always get these type of brief hold-ups as the volunteers and security detail work through their first night at an event. I suppose that is not the most ringing endorsement, either, but hopefully nothing worse develops over the course of the next week.
This is a huge few days for sport in South Africa. The Springboks are set to begin their test match with the British & Irish Lions on Saturday. In fact, the Lions played last night in Port Elizabeth, a stadium that was going to be used for the Confederations Cup before delayed construction caused its removal from the venue list. Additionally, the South African cricket team has advanced to the Twenty20 World Cup semifinal in England .
First up, however, Bafana Bafana are fighting for their Confed Cup lives against New Zealand. I won’t be at the stadium, but we’ll see if a vuvuzela or two makes an appearance in the hotel…
Read More: Africa, Confederations Cup
by Anders Wollek · June 17, 2009
My first post on runofplay,
I first came across this website by reading the Pro Vercelli story(it’s so good that it motivates me to get up for work in the morning) and I felt a South African viewpoint was needed on the Confed Cup. As I live in Cape Town, I won’t be able to watch any of the games live(instead foreigners can travel to beautiful cities like Bloemfontein) but the excitement in this country is amazing, we have hosted all the major events from other sports(except the Olympics which I really don’t care for) such as cricket, rugby world cup etc. and to finally see superstars playing competitive football in our country is gonna be truly amazing (Man Utd pre-season friendlies are definitely not competitive). I’m fortunate to have tickets for 2 games here in Cape Town for the World Cup and I honestly feel the pessimism from other countries is unnecessary. Unless you have been to South Africa then are you really in a position to judge?
Anyway, just out of curiosity, what are the reasons why some of you out there think South Africa will not be good hosts? (Feedback would be appreciated)
That damn noise is doing my head in.
And I don’t mean Tommy Smyth.
TommY SmYth(with a Y, two actually) is an embarassment to commentary, he makes Nigel Winterburn seem like a good commentator.
And vuvuzela’s are part of south african soccer as much as corruption is part of Italian soccer
I originally read the title as “Forbidden Vulva”. Guess that shows where my mind is …
I sympathize with Johnny – Wembley took forever to finish, was over budget, delayed, yet no one talk about the UK in the same developing world terms.
Granted, the Germans put on a fantastic product in 2006; but, then, again, they are the Germans.
I’ve written about this before, but to my mind all the talk about whether South Africa will be “ready” for 2010 is completely missing the point. There is absolutely no chance that the country won’t be “ready,” i.e. that the stadiums won’t be finished or that there won’t be a viable security plan in place. I can understand worrying about the last point especially—you don’t have to have been to SA to raise an eyebrow at some of the crime statistics—but there’s too much at stake for them (FIFA, the ANC) not to get it right. The people will be great hosts, the country will look spectacular on TV, and tourists will have a fantastic experience (even the ones who aren’t commuting in from Mozambique).
To my mind, what’s so maddening about the “can they be ready” chatter is that it’s keeping people from asking questions about how this readiness is going to be achieved or whether the cost is worth it for the people of South Africa. It’s insane that with all the stories out there suggesting massive corruption and labor unrest at the stadium projects, plans for forced relocation of shackdwellers (i.e., clearing out slums with firehoses) so that tourists aren’t forced to see any signs of poverty as they travel between their hotel compounds and the stadiums, huge graft-compounded cost overruns being passed directly onto the people in the form of taxes (including for things like trains that will be of no use after the tournament ends and luxury hotels that will be enormously profitable, just not for the people who are actually paying to build them), journalists being intimidated and dragged into court for daring to suggest that the Motaung family isn’t 100% legitimate, and people turning up dead after trying to expose the links between the government and the private industry that’s getting rich from fleecing public construction projects (in Mbombela and elsewhere)—that with all that out there, the only question that matters to the western media is the paternalistic and vaguely racist “but can they be ready in time?” Which is doing two things that make my head spin around:
(1) Actually increasing the freedom the bad guys have to operate (since if the only thing that matters is “readiness,” any tactics that can be justified as helping to achieve readiness are legitimate).
(2) Setting up a false test for success once the World Cup actually starts, since as long as things look pretty and the trains run on time all we’re going to hear from the TV commentators is what a triumph this was for the people who made it happen, with no thought for what the guy with the machine gun who’s “keeping you safe” represents.
I think the tournament will be a triumph for regular South Africans, and I hope that my concerns about this stuff are overblown and that for most people in SA this will be purely an occasion for pride and enjoyment. (And maybe for learning to love soccer without the constant drone of a swarm of millions of bees engulfing the microphone at an Aftermath concert.) But there’s definitely enough going on in the background to raise some serious questions about money, FIFA, the government, and violence, and the ridiculous story/conflict about “readiness” is keeping them from being asked.
I am still recovering from being able to celebrate my country’s first EVER confed cup win so please excuse any bad grammar or spelling.
I know people will say it was only new zealand but with bafana bafana you can never take any game for granted, and personally I think they gave a very good account of themselves. The only criticism I can have of them is that they should have won by more but hey they did alright.
Considering SA doesn’t have many players in prominent European leagues I was wondering out of the players on show last night, did any of them really stand out for you as having the potential to play at a higher level(if anybody mentions our striker mashego then i know you’re taking the piss).
Also in regards to the train system not being used after the world cup, i don’t think that will be the case. A city like Joburg is developing at a rapid rate,when i go there every 3 or so months it looks completely different,areas which were previously bush are now full of new houses and shopping malls and as a result joburg is huge, this train system is long overdue and i think the world cup was the kick up the ass that the government needed to set up a better transport system.
To end my post, our machine gun wielding president thinks that you can avoid getting HIV by taking a shower after unprotected sex, not something I would recommend but I’m sure my president is a wiser man than me.
They looked great last night. Nice to see Parker get some quick redemption for the miscue in the Iraq game.
The Iraq-New Zealand match is suddenly looking a lot more interesting than you would ever expect an Iraq-New Zealand match to be.
As for players with European potential, Mokoena aside, I’m not sure. Not Gaxa, since it helps to be able to make contact with the ball when you swing your leg at it. I was impressed with Masilela, but that’s where the “only New Zealand” problem comes in, because never before when I’ve seen him play have I thought, “That’s a top-class left back.”
Glad to hear that some of the infrastructure spending will be useful after the tournament—especially since, with a $17.5 billion World Cup transportation budget and 450,000 expected visitors for the tournament, the country is basically claiming that it’s going to spend $40,000 (US) on transportation for each individual visitor. From what I’ve read this is being conceived as part of a larger effort to boost tourism after the tournament, and the portrayals of the new transport plan I’ve seen have suggested that most of the spending has been done with the needs of tourists in mind rather than the needs of people in SA. I haven’t been able to get that much information, though. It probably stands to reason that outside the country they’d be emphasizing utility to outsiders and inside the country they’d be emphasizing utility to citizens.
Did anyone else just watch Brazil score a goal on a US corner kick? Was that real? Did DaMarcus Beasley just fail to control a short corner rolled to him from about four yards away, allowing Brazil to charge forward on a counterattack while Beasley stood at the other end of the pitch, shaking his head in bewilderment? Did that happen? Did I dream that?
cant believe i got up for this shit.
Hey, I know, maybe the US could get a red card.
MLS players getting red cards, in international play! Never! Man, when will these international refs get up to par with the quality of US officiating?
The final 5 minutes was the Clint Dempsey show.
Not sure how this South African adventure could have gone worse for the U.S. How did Kljestan earn his dismissal?
Derek Rae just said the word “vuvuzelas” in the run-up to the Italy-Egypt game. That was kind of awesome. On the other hand, Tommy Smyth just described the pre-match anthems as “an incredible, incredible moment.”
The Egypt match was quite exciting. One of the big two (Italy and Brazil) could yet get knocked out …
The thing is South Africa actually has great football songs and does not need the plastic horn:
http://www.footballiscominghome.net/vide o/the-vuvuzela-conspiracy/
Viva Vuvuzelas!