FIFA World Cup

*** note, I had prepared this text some weeks ago, but forgot to upload it so now it is slightly outdated ***

The 2010 FIFA World Cup is over, with my favourite team (Spain) winning their first title ever. No longer do the news bulletins on the radio start with a countdown, and the couple of countdown clocks in town are now rendered useless. One newspaper headlined: "1430 days to go till next world cup", just to show how much South Africa was collectively living towards this tournament.

Previous hosting nations all suffered from a collective depression once the World Cup was over, and I am left wondering how that will affect the people here. One thing is absolutely sure, they showed all the sceptics wrong and organized a superb tournament. The media around the world wrote page after page about all the things that could go wrong in the first African edition of the biggest sporting event in the world. They talked about thieves and rapists, power shortages, terrorist attacks, stadiums not being ready, etc etc... and it is certain they scared away a lot of potential visitors. But none of those dreadful things happened. South Africa was well prepared. They had extra police and security forces around, agreed with neighbouring nations on backup plans should the SA electrical network fail, had navy vessels protecting the oceans and finalized all their world class stadiums in time. If you ever had safety concerns travelling through this country, now was the safest time ever. In fact, the few little incindents that happened were foreign tourists stealing or fighting. The specially erected legal courts gave quick trials to deal with the matter.
Of course there was going to be a lot of debate on a third world - and, moreover African - country hosting the costly event. It is very easily to argue that all those billions spent could have gone to public infrastructure, health care or similar. Then again, building those stadia, roads, hotels and taking care of catering, decoration, etc... provided a lot of jobs, a major cash injection and a positive effect on the economy in the middel long run. You can keep talking back and forward with $ amounts, I am personally convinced the biggest gain is in the untangible
benefits.

The feeling of togetherness and collective achievement can not be expressed in $. But it is certainly there. Never before have the South Africans been so united in supporting their national team Bafana Bafana. Never before have they all followed the world cup so closely. The vast majority of the country was debating the games, the rules, the results and dubious referee discussions, where a couple of months ago the news papers had a weekly feature of explaining the rules and introducing the football stars. Even South Africans themselves are pleasantly surprised that everything ran so smoothly. They certainly believe in themselves and each other a lot more. Let's hope they can bank on this feeling for a long time to come.

On a personal level, I am very happy to have been so close to all of this. Everyone knows I would not have followed the world cup so closely if it hadn't been on my doorstep. When I had to apply
for the tickets, I wasnt sure how many to buy. I applied for 4 games and got 3 tickets. But by sheer stupid luck of my friend Florens (the dutch guy you see on the side here), who unexpectadly got 4 tickets to all of the games, I got to go to witness more legendary games.
It was actually fun to see the likes of Maradonna, Nessi, Ronaldo, Forlan, Torres, Xavi, Villa and all those other stars in real life.