Marcilio, Norman (a fellow HIV/AIDS worker who has contracted with ETC), Norman's brother Raymond and I went to see the Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs play soccer today at FNB Stadium (also known as Soccer City) near Soweto. The two teams are huge rivals and their supports are avid as well as a bit crazy but really know how to make noise and support their side. Marcilio and I took well over a hundred photos but I am having trouble finding the cord so I will have to download, select and edit them later and put them up before I leave for Mozambique if I find the time.
It is hard to believe that this was my first experience after all my travels and work in North and South America, Europe and Africa seeing a professional soccer match in person. I have seen minor league games, mainly in Portland, both the US men’s and women’s teams play exhibition matches, Mozambique’s Black Mambas play a friendly against Zambia or some other country but never before a pro league soccer/football match. I really haven’t watched much soccer on TV here as this is mainly a rugby and cricket household but I wanted to go to a game since coming.
The game was sold out and standing room only and they even let some people fill the aisles using the steps as seats. We chose to sit at the top section at about midfield to have a good view birds eye view over the game, crazy Chiefs and Pirates supporters and get a nice view of the Joburg skyline, mine tailings Soweto and hundreds of cars. The pre game entertainment was from a South African group whose name I don’t recall that played some great music and got the crowd signing in unison. Before the game Marcilio and I walked around taking pictures of vendors, supporters of both sides (in the US I would say fans of both teams, but when in Rome….), the crowd filling the seats and more. We returned to find that Norman and his brother hadn’t held two seats for us very well and thus Norman gave us his seat and he went to find another one.
The Pirates scored early and held most of the momentum, energy and attacks throughout. We were sitting on the Chiefs side, with the sun behind our backs and as I was wearing my South African Bafana Bafana (boys will be boys) jersey so as to support the national men’s team and thus not provoke fans from either side to give me a hard time, I rolled up the collar to act as good protection against the sun. I had heard about fights at these matches, chairs being torn out and or burned and more but on this day to my knowledge none of this happened and people seemed to get along well.
At halftime the entertainment was a more “hip” musical group that the pre game one who moved around the field signing to the four sides of the stadium. Then the “Amakhosi” cheerleaders or whatever the girls are that dance for the home team Chiefs came on to dance to Justin Timberlake’s (I am sorry if this mention of his name gives him any positive publicity) Sexyback. The song alone is bad enough but then to have watch the cheerleaders joined by 20 or so girls from about 10-18 dance in sexually provocative ways made it that much worse. I swear some of the cheerleader minis they had join the big girls must have been between about 10 and 18 and when you see dances like this by children you can see how it adds to the shockingly/disgusting high percentage of rapes in this country. Children grinding and bumping in short skirts in front of drunk spectators doesn’t really help the situation. I wonder if I was the only one thinking about this as it was going on or even now after the fact.
Back to the game the second half saw the Pirates having many more opportunities off of penalty kicks, corners and headers to score but they failed to and in the last minute of the game (injury time) this failure to go up 2 to 0 came back to hurt them when Shaun Bartlett (no relation to the President on the West Wing) scored off a header in the closing seconds. It was a bummer seeing as how the Pirates had dominated most of the game. Some Pirates fans had started celebrating with about 10 minutes to go and were getting rather obnoxious and I don’t think they actually even saw the game as they were too busy dancing, tooting their horns and harassing the Chiefs fans. For more on the game you can see the write up at South Africa’s Premier Soccer League (PSL). Also to find out more about the PSL, standings, etc. go to Premier Soccer League. Speaking of standings I am used to looking to see the schedule of when teams are set to play and the standings of how the teams are doing in terms of wins, loses and ties but here fixtures seems to be the word used for schedule and results for standings. It took me some time to find the schedule on the PSL site to see when games would be taking place as I didn’t know what fixtures and results meant in this context.
FNB is home to the Kaizer Chiefs and the Pirates play closer to Soweto. FNB is going to be the main stadium for the 2010 World Cup the dates for which were just announced this last week. Supposedly this was the last game to be played at the stadium before reconstruction commences to make the stadium fit close to 100,000 spectators. In the shape we found it there is much to be done to clean, upgrade, add on to and get the stadium in World Cup shape. The construction was supposed to have started in early 06 and not now at the end and it is supposed to be done at some point next year to get FIFA’s okay for 2010. It is supposed to be the main stadium hosting the opening and closing ceremonies and a number of matches but I am not sure how this will happen if they haven’t started working on it already. For more on the history of FNB you can visit their site but be a bit weary as you might find spelling mistakes and factual errors like I did or go to Wikipedia.
All in all it was fun to go to the game with friends, be warmly received by fans from both sides with my neutral jersey supporting South Africa, see a decently energetic and athletic game, not witness any violence amongst fans and have another cross cultural experience in South Africa. I forgot to mention that I wasn’t the only white person at the game but I would guess that out of the 80,000 or so fans there yesterday I was amongst no more than 100 white people. Most all fans were black with a few of Asian, Middle East or mixed heritage. The goalie for one team was white, the main ref was colored and so was one of the players for the other team. Soccer is primarily a black sport in South Africa and I wonder how these fans who paid 20 rand (a little less than three US dollars) for open seating (the only option unless you are a VIP or have a company box) will be able to afford World Cup tickets in 2010 that I will guess will go from hundreds of dollars to thousands. Ironic that the people in this country who love the sport the most will be least likely to see it in person and that elites in SA (from various racial groups) along with overseas guests (maybe including myself) will be able to see the greatest sporting event on the planet in person.
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