soccer

Port Elizabeth, or the city which the new government has renamed Nelson Mandela Bay, built a stadium just for the World Cup. It's a beautiful big bowl with a white canopy covering most of the seats. The paint is fresh and the plastic seats are unscratched. But it was half empty when the teams kicked off Saturday for the first match of the Round of 16.

I noticed as I checked Fifa's website that this stadium has the most available tickets of any stadium, I said to my South African friend, Garth. “I'm not surprised. The Eastern Cape is the poorest province in the country. And people are just slow to do anything here. It's just a general lassitude,” he said.

Garth lives just down the road in Jeffrey's Bay, and though he's not so into soccer he said he would enjoy accompanying me to the match.

The row below our seats was empty, so we could rest our legs on the backs of those seats, and to my right there was no one, so I could set my notebook and a bar of chocolate there. I appreciated the relaxed atmosphere that came with a smaller crowd, just as a change of pace. My ears appreciated there being no vuvuzelas nearby; the day before on my drive down to the Eastern Cape they had suddenly lost half their hearing, and I wondered if it didn't have anything to do with the horn blowing they had endured over the past weeks.

The stadium's look was half empty, the sound was mild, and there were fewer people around wearing South Africa's yellow Bafana Bafana jerseys. The country had truly seemed on fire for the World Cup before the home team lost out last week, but the air felt so tempered now. Bafana Bafana being out might also account for the Nelson Mandela Bay stadium being less than full.

On the big screens the night's attendance was announced at 30,597. The stadium has a capacity of 46,082. So, two-thirds full.

I hadn't seen anyone outside the stadium selling tickets. Fifa 's strict ticket regulations probably accounted for some of the lack of attendance too. Tickets can only be legally bought through Fifa-approved providers, they can only be resold through Fifa's website, and they cannot be legally resold at all if the buyer has already printed a hard copy of the ticket. Scalpers do exist outside stadiums, as I'd seen on other nights, but they risk arrest.

Still, there were four blocks of fans down in the lower seats going wild to support their countries on this night. Two blocks wore all red for South Korea and two blocks flew blue flags for Uruguay. Ugh, I had to watch the pink pajamas play again, which I hadn't known when I purchased the tickets months ago. But Garth said he would root for them since they were also from the Southern Hemisphere. I went for the South Koreans of course; many of my English students back in San Diego are from South Korea.South Koreans cover up for their national anthem.Unfortunately, Uruguay went up 2-1 in the second half, and then the physical rain started. The white canopy protected us. Only light mist occasionally reached our upper level seats, but the players got soaked and so did the lower rows of fans. Soon the bottom 15 rows were nearly cleared out and the stadium looked even emptier. Two-thirds full and draining due to the downpour. When the referee blew his whistle at 93 minutes there was only light clapping for the Uruguayan whiners, I mean winners.

I continued to think of reasons for why a World Cup match in soccer crazy South Africa would only be two-thirds packed, and I got another idea when we arrived back at Garth's house. His wife said his father had called while we were gone. She told his father that we had gone to the game, to which the father replied, “They went to East London?” For that was where a rugby match was being played that night. It didn't help to fill seats at a World Cup of soccer match that the people in South Africa who have the most disposable income, the whites, are mostly interested in any sport other than soccer. UPDATE: Port Elizabeth's professional soccer team has been sold and may move, leaving the brand new stadium as a white elephant.

The team from North Korea has got to be the most intriguing of the 2010 World Cup. And a look at the roster of the team shows that many of its members play professionally for a soccer club back home called April 25. A date is a curious name for a sports team.

It turns out, however, that this date for this sports team makes a lot of sense, for April 25 is Military Foundation Day in North Korea, and North Korea is the most militarized country in the world, with about 20% of all North Korean men being in the armed forces. Further, the professional soccer team April 25 is not only named after Military Foundation Day but also actually belongs to the Korean People's Army.

I've been keeping a pansy list. It includes players which, when an opponent gets close enough, throw their hands in the air, arch their backs, roll in the grass and then look at the referee with a soap opera face while grasping their shins for dear life. Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo is on the pansy list, and so is Oezil from Germany. France and Ghana have some players on it too, but then last night's game between South Africa and Uruguay made the list obsolete. For Uruguay tops them all. Uruguay wears pink pajamas.

They spent so much time on their knees in the grass, writhing in fake pain, that the referee eventually fell for one of the acting jobs and awarded them a foul which probably ended South Africa's World Cup.

Uruguay was the better team, technically. They were up a goal, and they didn't need to cheat, but they did. A Uruguayan player and the South African goalie were both running at the ball when the goalie slid, the Uruguayan jumped, and the tip of one of the goalie's cleats kissed the tip of one of the Uruguayan player's cleats. Then the Uruguayan, Luis Suarez, twisted himself in the air, spread his arms out wide and looked to the referee begging. The referee kicked out Itumeleng Khune, the South African goalie. Uruguay got a penalty kick and went up 2-0. The stands were shocked. The entire country seemed deflated. The South Africans in the room with me were silent. The television announcer stuttered until he said, “People in the country are likely to lose interest in the World Cup now.”

It wasn't that Bafana Bafana was going to lose the game 2-0; it was that they got ripped off. Soon enough, the stands began emptying. The likelihood that South Africa can now make it to the next round is paper thin.

I hear no more vuvuzelas outside my window. Thanks, Uruguay. I hope you sleep well in your fuzzy wuzzy pansy pants.

Apparently, in a game of soccer, a tie with the Americans is considered a loss to the English. They really can't accept what happened on Saturday. Immediately after the match I overheard an English teenager talking to his friends, “The Americans did nothing! They had like two shots on goal. They did nothing to earn a draw!”

On the drive home I heard a radio interview with an Englishman who was likewise disgusted, blaming the “loss” on the English goalkeeper: “Green is pathetic. My mother could have stopped that goal.”

And the last night I met an Englishman at the hostel here in Johannesburg whose first words to me were, “You alright, yeah?” I said I was, however he meant it. “Where are you from?” I'm from the States. California. “Ah. Our goalie gave you one, yeah?”

Then he took a swig of his quart of Black Label beer and tried to sell me some pins he had made showing the US and England flags and the date of Saturday's match.

The national soccer teams which are competing in the World Cup have names, like South Africa's Bafana Bafana – Zulu for Boys Boys.

And the team names seem to fall into a couple of categories. Some are named for colors: Les Bleus of France, Oranje of Netherlands, La Roja of Chile, and The All Whites of New Zealand.

There are animals: The Elephants of Ivory Coast, The Super Eagles of Nigeria, The Three Lions of England, and better than those are The Indomitable Lions of Cameroon.

Some team names are helpful, like The Black Stars of Ghana. The flag of Ghana is easy to confuse with Cameroon, unless you remember that it has a black star in the middle whereas Cameroon has a yellow one.

The award for the most ridiculous name has got to go to Australia, who call themselves The Socceroos.

But America seems to be the only team without a name. Although one magazine I read referred to them as The Yanks, every American I've asked isn't aware of such a name.

The first time the US played England in a World Cup match was 1950. This was also the first time England blessed the world with its presence at a World Cup, even though the event had been taking place for two decades already at that point. The English invented the sport, and they strutted into Brazil like heirs to the World Cup crown, arriving only two days before their first match and staying in the touristy area of Copacabana. Then the U.S. beat them 1-0. This is still considered by many to be the biggest shocker in World Cup history.

 Soccer City stadium in Soweto, Johannesburg, just before the World Cup was opened. I arrived at the stadium about five hours before kickoff time. This was the kickoff of the entire World Cup, the first World Cup in Africa, after all. It was cold, windy and hazy. This was Johannesburg in the winter. The stands were empty, but I met Collins. He is from the north of South Africa, Limpopo, where his first language is Sepedi, almost the same as Sesotho. He was going to work at a food stand during the game. I asked him how much they pay him, but he said it was just volunteer work. He would be working for a wage at Peter Mokaba stadium in Polokwane, where other World Cup matches would be played, but he was told to come down and work the opening match in Johannesburg just for practice.

The food stands were pretty American. They served only Coca-Cola beverages, only Budweiser beer, and the only hot food was hot dogs – except what they called a chili dog, which was a hot dog with bits of hot peppers inside. You can keep Americans off soccer, but you can't keep American businesses from making a buck off it.

I bought a chili dog and asked Collins who was going to win today's game between South Africa and Mexico. "South Africa will win 3-0," he said. "I had a dream last night, and my dreams always come true. I couldn't argue with that. Collins continued, "South Africa will also make it to the quarterfinal, definitely. My dream says that in the end there is Brazil, Portugal, Spain and Argentina who will be with the trophy, but I'm not sure which one. I will keep dreaming."I circled the stadium a few times to get a sense of the place. I heard mostly English and Spanish. And though it was still three hours before kickoff, the South Africans were already blowing their horns, called vuvuzelas, incessantly. When they blew them in the face of Mexicans, the Mexicans only smiled. Everyone was just happy to be at such a momentous event. The South Africans loved the sombreros and ponchos of the Mexicans and asked to take pictures together.

 After hearing what happened at the World Cup tune-up match between Nigeria and North Korea on Sunday, I learned a little about how to avoid getting trampled over the next month.

1. Dress for comfort and speed, not style. Wear closed toe shoes and pants.
2. Resist the temptation to try and get into the stadium first by gathering at the gate just before opening. 
3. Go your own way. If you follow the others, you'll be battling. Better to take a different route if possible, maybe on the outer edge of the pack.

Best of luck to me!

“There are just two things about the World Cup that prevent Americans
from caring: It involves soccer and the rest of the world. When I hear
that Tunisia is playing Belgium for the crucial Group H runner-up
spot, all I want is a map. The only way Americans are going to learn
another country's name is if it attacks us.”

Joel Stein wrote that in Time magazine back in 2002.

[img_assist|nid=204|title=|desc=|link=none|align=center|width=480|height=640] There's no mistaking what time it is in South Africa. From the moment I got off the plane in the Johannesburg airport, I was stepping all over World Cup fever.