The World Cup and Southern Africa

During the world cup I will be traveling around South Africa. After the tournament is over, I plan to travel over ground about 1800 miles up to Nairobi, where I will fly back to the states from in early August.

In this blog I hope to share my experiences, thoughts, and stories. I am not completely sure why I am here, I hope to know by the time I leave. I will focus on a few topics:
1) How do we develop people? (Education, Values, etc..)
2) Is there any absolute truth? I hope so.
3) Football

This will not be clean and edited, it is my journal. I will write very much in stream of consciousness, most statements I make are questions that I wish answered. Please feel free to add to my inner-dialogue.

Friday, July 2, 2010

Last Friday

I’ve had a nice day in Bloemfontein, I wandered around, stopped in a couple museums, had a steak, pap(along the lines of rice, but not really) and beans for $3. I’m pleased now because I’ve barely spent anything today, I sleep on a bus to East London tonight(r210) and I’m staying at a hostel tomorrow night for r110. My goal is to average $50 per day, not including match tickets. I don’t think I’ma go to any more matches, I’ve been 7, spent $580 on tickets, I think that’s enough. This is by far the best world cup to be at to see matches, I keep hearing that in Germany last year, scalpers were getting 1000 euros for group stage matches. We’ll see though, I may have a walk around the stadium for the semi-final in Cape Town to see if I find anything reasonable. I had planned on being in Port Elizabeth for the round of sixteen match (Uruguay-South Korea), but that bus was sold out tonight so I’m going to East London for a day. It’s about 300 km east of PE, then hopefully I will get to PE on Sunday.

Despite the long odds I was hopeful Cote d’Ivoire would get through. They have had terrible luck. In ’06 they were in a group with Holland and Argentina, this time with Brazil and Portugal. I truly think they folded in not being more adventurous vs. Portugal. I think they may be a hair better than Portugal and that was the win they needed to advance. Portugal had the better schedule, in hindsight at least. They got a weakened brazil side, no Kaka, Robinho, or Elano. Brazil also had nothing to gain in that last match. That second half may have been the most boring half in WC history. Cote d’Ivoire still folded. They were immature against Brazil and couldn’t match Portugal’s goal total against NK….I’m just upset they didn’t get through, I think they could’ve been a very dangerous team in the knockout stages.

I’m excited about the Chile-Spain match. I have an hour and a half of sitting and waiting, but they are both good sides and they both need a result. I don’t think it will be quite as good as Ghana-Germany, but we will see.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)