Whats up y'all,
Just wanted to extend a thanks to MFlem for allowing me to become a part of this blog as I'm pretty fired up about the World Cup, especially since I'm spending my summer working in Cape Town and going to some matches.
I got into Cape Town about a week ago and its been a blast so far, the city is beautiful and I'm going to need a second liver by the time I leave this place as they party pretty aggressively. It should be a great site for some potentially awesome matches. The matches that I'll be heading to are England vs. Algeria, Cameroon vs. Netherlands, Round of 16 in Cape Town (G,H), Round of 16 in Joburg (A,B) and possibly the quarter final in Cape Town. My goal is to provide an account of these actual matches, as well as what the scene is like around both Cape Town and when I visit Joburg.
You can already see a buzz in Cape Town as its the most popular world cup match site out of the 7 cities and tourists are really starting to flock in. The first match here is France vs. Uruguay on Friday and the city will pretty much be shut down. Theres a 2 mile path called "Fan Fest", which leads up to the stadium on the waterfront and will be filled with vendors, bars, and jumbotrons for people to watch the game.
A few of us tried to go see the stadium a couple days ago, but were denied by security as they are still doing some construction in the area. From what we saw, its an awesome looking stadium and being right on the water doesn't hurt. It seems like the World Cup has allowed Cape Town to do a lot of work/construction that was needed, which should go up to the last second before being completed.
Bafana Bafana (The Boys), is the nickname for the South African soccer team and they are well supported in the country. After meeting some locals, I'm really hoping they can emerge out of Group A although they're clearly not predicted to. I think if they beat Mexico on Friday, it could become a real possibility and I can tell you that its going to be mayhem around here. An interesting fact that people keep pointing to between this team and the rugby team of 1996 is the rugby team had all white players except one black player and this team has all black players and one white player. Race is an extremely prevalent issue here and people are very open talking about it, but I think if the SA team does well it could really increase the spirit and ease tensions in the country. Most of the locals say that if South Africa doesn't emerge, that they will support any African team that does. The USA is generally not well received around here, as you barely see any American flags but do see the flags of many other countries. Either way, my hopes are starting to increase for our team especially after Buddle and Gomez tore up Australia yesterday but our defense is still really sketchy.
My main question is whether people feel that Onyewu should start against England? I'm really liking how Goodson is playing so I think Onyewu should ride the pine but when he's on top of his game, Onyewu does make our D much stronger. Clearly, Bocanegra should be playing left back so hopefully we shore up our D before the England match which I cannot wait for. Theres a few interns from England in my program as well so the trash talk will certainly increase as we start getting towards the game
Anyway, I'll hope to post again after this first weekend of matches and look forward to hearing from other people on the blog. Hopefully, no more marquee players get injured as its starting to affect the chances for certain teams. USA! USA ! USA!
Cheers,
PD
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