Archive for June, 2010

After a trip to the FIFA ticket office and numerous reloads of the FIFA website I’ve managed to get us tickets to two  additional games.  Today we are seeing Paraguay vs Japan in the round of 16 at the historic Loftus Versfeld Stadium this will be the first game we go to in Pretoria.  On top of that game I also managed to get tickets to Match 60,  so we now have tickets to two of the four quarter finals.  Match 60 will be the winner of the Paraguay/Japan game vs the winner of the Portugal/Spain game.  All of these are tickets through official channels so at list price.  We did discover that due to the change in the exchange rate, it works out about 10% cheaper buying the tickets on our credit cards in Rand vs $, so if given the option when buying your tickets, pay in rand.

Soon I’ll start trying to get tickets to the finals, I live in hope.

You can hear vuvuzelas long before games begin each night.  You hear them in cars, people walking and selling in the streets.  What happens after the game completes?  Does the sound die for a few hours?  See this video from Park Station in Johannesburg long after Argentina won against Mexico.

Not sure which teams they are, but I’m a big fan.

Another trip to Soccer City in Johannesburg.  We were off to see Argentina and Mexico in the final 16 at World Cup 2010.  We took our normal route of driving to Park Station to catch the direct, free train to the stadium that is offered for games.  This is our third trip using the train and we think we have a system worked out in parking, getting on before and after the game and then getting away from the traffic.  One of the benefits of riding the trains is interacting with fans of the teams about to play, and fans that just love the sport and want a good game.  Carl was able to grab an interview with another group today on the train ride in.

As you can see, it isn’t hard to find awesome people everywhere we go.  We get insight into things to do, how the city was before the games and what they hope it will be in the future.  Once off the train today we sensed the size of the crowd would be different as we enter the final 16.  TV stations, cameras and crews were all over the grounds between security and ticketing.  Once again we stole some lighting to make our own intro shot.

Both Argentina and Mexico fans were fully dressed out and ready to show support.  Carl has a ton of pictures in the VVorldCup picture pool on Flickr.

The game was well played by both sides, much better than Portugal and Brazil the other day in Durban.  We had our first encounter with some fans that had a bit much to drink.  They didn’t have issues with us, but with each other in close proximity of our seats.  It goes without saying that the fun of that moment escapes until the issue is resolved.  Once that passed, everything jumped back to normal being loud and fun.  We stuck around long enough to watch the stadium empty and take more pictures with fans and of the pitch.  Look at the Flickr album to catch them all.

After the performances in the group stages I think no one will be particularly suprised that England didn’t progress furhter than the last 16.  As I said earlier, I don’t mind if England lose as long as they try and in my opinion it looked like they tried against Germany, so I can’t complain.

Refereeing during the entire tournament has been sligtly suspect and the referee and his assistants made a huge mistake by not allowing the fantastic Lampard goal.  Did it alter the game, sure it did, England had to put more players forward to try and score more goals which in turn opened up their back end.   Still Germany did win, but I don’t think they will be this years winners.

So does this result have any impact on the games we’re seeing or fun time we’re having over here, none whatsoever.  We never managed to get tickets to an England game, and I sometimes wonder if the fans at England games would be quite as friendly as the fans have been at the other games.  We did witness our first bit of football violence yesterday at the Argentina vs Mexico game in Soccer City, where an Argentinian fan threw another Argentinian fan down a couple of rows in the stadium, from what we could see it was pretty much due to alcohol, but still not something you like to see.

I am continually impressed at how friendly the South African’s are, everyone of them seems to be on a campaign to have you return again in the future.

For the last few games I’ve been taking my Canon DSLR camera to the games with it’s zoom lens and have been trying to capture the faces of various fans and also in some cases non fans.  I think some of the pictures have come out great, and many I think illustrate the different emotions the fans can go through during a game. You can see all my photos on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/groups/vvorldcup/