Abhijit Ray shares his experience in the World Cup 2010
Finally the dream day came on 17th June,2010.
We started the journey from home – destination was soccer city stadium,Johannesburg.
It’s not very far – we calculated the distance and it was just 35KM from our home.
But who knew that traffic of johannesburg roads is going to challenge us in each square inch!!
That day probably all roads of Johannesburg were merging towards single destination – and that was soccer city stadium.
We started our journey at 10:30AM, some how we managed to park our car in pre-booked car parking area at 12:30PM, and from parking lot we walked around 5KM,finally we (me,my spouse debamitra my friend and his spouse) were there exactly at 1:30PM when the match was just about to start.
While coming from parking lot towards stadium,multi-colored atmospthere and consistent enchanting melody of vuvuzelas (well somebody might find it noisy but that day I was just hipnotized by all of these) inspired me to buy one big sky blue flag of argentina – the guy who was selling flag initialy told for R100,me started from R15 then we made the deal at R40 🙂 (win win deal indeed)
It was the soccer city stadium where Nelson Mandela delivered his first speech in Johannesburg after his release from prison.
It underwent a major upgrade for the 2010 tournament,earlier capacity was 80,000 and current capacity is 94,700.
Anyway,on 17th June,2010, 83,000 crownd was present to watch the argentina-south korea match.
It’s really a world class stadium with huge infrastructure including all modern facilities.
Colorful soccer city was really blooming under the blue sky,it was a sunny winter day,temp was around 3-4 degree with heavily cold storm.
This is not my first visit of any football stadium which is situated in a foreign country,in 2004 I was there in boca-juniors stadium argentina.
Anyway,I was crazy to see mesi,tevez,veron etc in flesh and blood,well to see my childhood hero,the ‘God’ of football maradona too.
But I already saw him in flesh and blood in Mohun Bagan ground and in Salt Lake stadium,Calcutta in the year 2008,when he came to india.
Inside atmpsphere of the stadium and the holistic ambience was really splendid!83,000 ‘disciplined’ crowd was all set with all their colorful identities, flyamboyant appearances,with vuvuzelas etc etc..
Game started…and in the gallery we the spectators started cheering our favourite team..
Messi was just awesome – my observation is normally he roams around center circle and towards opponent mid-field area,but whenever he gets any smell of attack,he starts showing his tremendous skill along with his inborn ‘latin’ dribbling power – which is very much satisfactory for the eye of the football lovers.
Our seat was just behind the argentina goal post (in second half it was korean side indeed),which was very much near to the ground.
This we can not imagine in any of the Indian football stadium where spectators normally seats literally miles away from the play ground.
Messi’s skill,Tevez’s powerful run,higuain’s poetic execution – gave immense pleasure to me specially,I am an Argentine supporter since 1986,when a just 7 year boy saw Maradona magic in black & white idiot box that also in neighbour’s house (and also during mid-night as well 🙂
Each of my expected and intended ‘will’ won finally – saw 5 goals in a world cup match,argentina won,messi was just awesome,higuain did hattrick what else
I could have been prayed from football god !
After the match finished we saw their restrained emotions of joy – some were dancing,some were singing in chorus.
This is definitely going to be the most overwhelming and most memorable event which I have ever seen in my life!
I am attaching one snap here..
Viva Argentina !
Cheers
Abhijit
And since 11 June,2010, in each and every moment so many rainbows are creating here on african soil,by mixing of not only with white,black and brown but also with green (brazil),sky blue (argentina),Yellow (africans),Red (danish),dark blue (french,japanese) etc etc…with N number of combinations.