Having fun in black

World football championship eyes of eyewitnesses

38th minute of the match. Milan Jovanovich scores a victorious goal against the German national team.

The world has gone crazy - hundreds of millions of people, despising work, house, the rest of their lives, watch football. On June 26, he will go crazy finally: the 16 best teams of the planet in playoff games will begin the struggle for the title of world champion

Fans and players of the Serbia national team celebrate a victory that leaves their team a chance to exit the group
So, the outsiders of the championship have already decided, obvious leaders are not yet. For the first time in history, the hostess of the World Cup-the South African team-could not get out of her group in the playoffs and will observe the struggle as a spectator.

Around the Ellis Park stadium in Johannesburg, sad tourists from Nigeria roam, holding white and colorful chicken under the armpits. The match of their national team with Argentina has not yet ended, but it is already clear that there is no victory. “We will lose,” the Fan of Temba sighs, dressed in a green-white T-shirt-Nigeria national colors. “They did not let us carry chickens to the stadium.” My uncle said that in 1998, when we played in France, no one encroached on our traditions. And then we won the Spaniards. ”
Nigerian fans have many proven ways to achieve the victory of their team. Witches and shamans who maintain contact with their ancestors were ready to ensure the defeat of Argentina with the help of black magic. And even if the guards and the stadium administration did not allow them to bury the bones of sacrificial animals and the beams of magic herbs on the football field, but at least they could be allowed to bring chickens to the stadium? And how else to disable the main star of the Argentinean national team of Lionel Messi?
“No, the witchcraft helped a little - Enonyama stood at the gate, like a real lion, and Messi did not score to us,” the Tema rejoices after the match. “But we still lost.”

The midfielder of the Argentina national team Honas Gutierres successfully destroyed the attacks that the Nigerian striker Guyeda Abashi began. Bottom line - 1: 0 - the first victory of the Diego Maradona team

Just like a buzzing

The World Cup is a real holiday for South Africans. From almost three million tickets for 64 football matches in 9 cities of the country, 85% were sold to residents of South Africa. Those to whom the tickets seemed too expensive (from $ 20 and above), they resold their visitors to tourists and are now sick in sports bars, pubs, fan zones and on the streets. Nigerians, Camerunes often join them, in short, fans from all six countries of the Black Continent, whose teams hit the mundial. African fans are in solidarity in one thing: no matter what team plays-Gana, cat-d'Ivoire, Nigeria or South Africa, the main thing is that this is the team of our continent, we are rooting for everyone. Even if they lose.
When the South African national team lost to Uruguay with a score of 3-0, the jubilation of the locals, supported by the wild buzz of the South African National Outdois, Wuvouzel, still continued until the morning.

Blindly

The enthusiasm of the Africans is transmitted to others. Thus, the great Dutch footballer and coach Johan Kruuff suddenly cheered after the defeat of Spain in a match with Switzerland and told the perplexing journalists that, despite the pessimism of experts, he sees this defeat ... the guarantee of the Victory of the Spaniards in the mundial. Here he sees everything here.

The Dane Martin Jorgensen (in the picture on the left) could not do anything with the Dutchman Vesley Sneider. 2: 0 - the victory of Holland, and Sneuder is recognized as the best player of the match

Chinese actors, musicians and builders who are said to be hired by the DPRK for the role of fans of the national team, during the match with Brazil forgot that they were in performance, and shouted for someone else's team as if they were actually from the most closed country in the world to support their idols.
During the match of Denmark - Niderland of 36 Dutch fans (almost all - slender blondes in orange dresses) in a fit of fan ecstasy, shattered naked. FIFA representatives decided that this act is nothing more than an advertisement for Bavaria beer and even arrested two girls. Their future fate will be decided by the court specially created during the championship.
Even the unbearable, reminiscent of the rumble of a giant swarm of the rumble of the rumble of the vuvouzel - and that turned out to be a reason for fun. The French Canal+ delighted its spectators: a monstrous thunderous buzzing, which prevents players on the field to hear each other, drowning out the most heart -like cries of fans, a buzzing that causes mass protests of football fans and representatives of FIFA, can be defeated. The technology for separating the sound frequencies used in cinemas allows us to exclude the buzz of vuvuse from broadcasting. Joy? Undoubtedly. Blindly.

In the back streets of the Sowo

The atmosphere of a crazy celebration, which is followed by people from around the world, ends in paradoxically, you just have to move away from the decent areas of Johannesburg for several hundred meters. Outside the windows of the car there were skyscrapers and stadiums, highway and along them flags of the countries of the World Cup. In Sowo, one of the most criminalized areas of the world, we are accompanied by CED, a native of these places. The walk is dangerous.

North Korean forward Gon Tae-SE (in red) could not catch up with the Brazilian defender Michel Bastos

“Nelson Mandela lived here,” Crid shows a modest house in the depths of the street. “And here in 1976, folk unrest began,” Crid nods his head in no appearance, an unremarkable intersection. 34 years ago, the elder brother died in clashes with the police here.
Every resident of Sowo knows the history of the number of nooks almost like his own. After all, it was here on June 16, 1976 that an uprising was raised against an apartheid. Weapons and now are not uncommon in the hands of local harsh men or adolescents spoiled by drugs. Until 1986, white foreigners were taken here on excursions organized on the principle of safari. But then they stopped - the buses began to be thrown with stones, stop and turn it over. “Calm,” says Chic. - You are with me. Do not be afraid of anything. ”
Easy to say. The main stadium of the World Cup is at some ten kilometers, but it feels like there is a completely different world around. Previously, people lived in plywood boxes or, which was considered chic, in dilapidated hibar. Now the district has been ennobled - they put the asphalt, and built the same type of stone houses, where the state relocated most of the inhabitants for their money. Only a few quarters remind of the past. Safety rules compiled by the managers of the championship do not recommend moving around the city on foot, talking on a mobile phone on the street, carrying valuable things, leave them in the hotel room, communicate with the local population and visit Sowo and Alexandria. Not everyone loves to follow the rules, but even meticulous following does not always help them. A Chinese journalist who went to the toilet in a large shopping center was strangled to loss of consciousness, depriving him of $ 1.5 thousand in addition, and the Portuguese sports observer was robbed directly in the hotel room: uninvited visitors penetrated the room through the window, instructed the reporter and took out everything from the room - from the rooms and money to the equipment and money to the rooms accreditation. And leaving, they looked into the neighboring numbers to the two Spaniards, significantly reducing their travel budget. "

World Cup -

Another step to creation

single nation: not white, not black,

Everything is South Africans

“In the journalistic environment, such cases are discussed hotly and for a long, no less long time than the fantastic defeat of the French national team in a match with the Mexicans (0: 2).“ Do not pay attention, ”says Chica,“ they just understand that you arrived and left. Only three weeks. Are you really sorry for this money? ”

Two worlds - one nation

But in the lobby of a fashionable hotel in Johannesburg, the picture amazes completely different. The stiff white lady from the locals applies a scarf to the eyes, watching how the company of black maids begins to dance and sing a national anthem, barely the South Africa team appears on the TV screen (the team lost the match). The paradox was that the current anthem of South Africa is an old revolutionary song of the Black National Movement, for which the white were enemies, just as they were for whites. “I’m paying now,” says Lady to the grandson, football journalist Simon Cooper, leading a regular column in the English Financial Times, and begins to sing along with maid. According to Cooper, whose parents were born in South Africa, his grandmother is very conservative. But the World Cup united everyone. Just as Nelson Mandela, the country, united around the Nelson's Nelson, united around the National Rugby team-“one team, one flag, one nation,” Mandela said that way. (True, unlike the football, the South Africa team then, in 1995, won the World Cup.) “South Africa is formed as a nation as a result of a contractual process, when the whites should agree with the blacks and the black ones with white. In such a situation, each of the parties necessarily loses something. It is difficult. So, the World Cup is another step to the creation of a single nation: not white, not black, all are South Africans, ”says Cooper. The white lady leaves the hotel, gets into the car on which the national flag flutters. She drives in her luxury car with a flag in Johannesburg, and the Africans greet her - “Google, Google”, which means “grandmother”. “And this is also recognition. We are one nation, ”Cooper says, and runs away to watch the Favorites of the Championship Spaniards will lose to the outsiders - Switzerland.
And nearby, in a couple of kilometers, the Nigerians, along with the South Africans who came out of the Bar neighboring stadium, are trying to portray the game of the national teams of Nigeria and Argentina in their faces, making up the Argentinean attack from the variegated chicken, and from the whites - the Nigerian defense line. And you understand: in the next three weeks - this is the holiday that is always with you.

South African Republic (South Africa)

In the north-west, he borders on Namibia, in the north with Botswana and Zimbabwe, in the northeast-with Mozambic and Swaziland. Inside the territory of the South Africa is the state-line of Lesotho. South Africa is one of the most ethnically diverse countries of Africa. The most important point in the history and policy of the country was the racial conflict between the black majority and the white minority. He reached his climax after the apartheid regime, which existed until the 90s, was established in 1948. The change of political system in South Africa occurred relatively peacefully: this is one of the few countries of Africa and - wider - the entire third world, where the coup has never happened. The “New South Africa” is often called the rainbow country - this term was invented by Archbishop Desmond Tutu as a metaphor of the new, multicultural and multi -ethnic society. South Africa is a country that developed nuclear weapons and subsequently voluntarily abandoned it.