The game did not flow very well, and compared to football played in the 3/4th playoff game from the previous night was disappointing, but lets face it, if I was only interested in the football I could have stayed at home and watched it on the tele with instant replays, attending the games has been as much about the atmosphere as the game itself. The Dutch played dirty and unfortunately their tournament will probably be remembered that way.

As with our other games, we met people in the stands, took lots of photos and did our regular video introductions…

Alex from the train to Soccer City

Andy introduces the World Cup final (be sure to listen to my score prediction)

Stacie, our gracious hostess, provides the closing comments

We did see a person invade the pitch early on in the game, and unfortunately, the security didn’t beat the crap out of him as I had been told would happen. Oh well, I did video what happened.

Intro Video

Chris getting attention

Dumb ass Italian

See you at the final!!!!

Sorry for the noise they make, they get excited easily.

We enjoyed sitting in the section right next to a large amount of Japan fans.  Carl has an amazing set of fan photos from this event in the VVorldCup photo pool on Flickr. Their enthusiasm for everyone on the team was excellent to see.  Their team is a hero, not just one or two international players.  I wish more fans saw their teams like this.  Many just want to see individuals make individual plays.  First up is our intro into a new stadium for us to see.

Intro

Both teams were so well balanced.  While the style of play was obviously different, they canceled each other out and breakaways were exciting when they happened.  As we hot 80 minutes in, all three of us looked at each other and said penalty shots.   It almost was dashed as Japan was so close to a goal in the last few minutes of overtime.

Outro

Skipping the thought that we went into penalty shots, this was one of the more exciting games to watch for me on a personal level.  Carl and Andy have a couple more to go.  Maybe one will prove more exciting.

Go visit the Flickr pool for all of our combined photos.

The one on the left is a guy….. so when he left and went for a beer, I snuck down and asked if I could get a picture with the funny costume…

NOTE: yes that is really Andy in there, not photoshop.  He walked down a few rows and asked to put it on for the shot.  They were more than happy to oblige.

Both teams were well celebrated for all their hard work at the end from the entire crowd. All our videos and pictures online shortly at our vVorldcup pool in Flickr.

Pictures are coming on Flickr and videos later

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.