Naturally I was a little apprehensive about this trip to South Africa. My old passport had no blank pages and despite several grovelling emails to the Department of Home Affairs in South Africa and the airport authority in Cape Town, I would have to get a new one before entering the country. I flew in from Vancouver on Sunday, less than 24 hours before my flight to Cape Town. My passport appointment was at 10am in Victoria, and my departing flight at 7pm the same evening, giving me little buffer time if anything went wrong. Thankfully, by 1pm I had my new passport in hand and headed to the airport.

Secondly, I have a whole bunch of tickets I’m trying to sell (28 tickets in fact, or about $11,000 worth at face-value!), whilst hoping that the tickets I’d bought on the internet for the England games would come through. Our cunning plan was to buy TST7s (i.e. guaranteed tickets to all the group games, knock-outs and the final itself) for North Korea, from FIFA directly. I mean, who buys tickets for North Korea? Surely whatever allocation FIFA had for them would go unfilled. And buying England tickets directly is near-on impossible. I’d actually had this idea for the 2006 world cup, but N. Korea didn’t qualify then. Well, it worked, and a little too well because both of our applications were successful, and so Steve and I now have 4 sets of tickets to every group game N. Korea have, including 4 tickets to the second round, quarter-finals, semi-finals and final itself! And when N. Korea get knocked out, the tickets will switch to following whoever wins their group, which should hopefully be Brazil. Yay. This should go some way to funding the trip. Incidentally, a BBC Radio Producer told me that he’d heard China had paid for 5,000 Chinese fans to fly out here, to support North Korea. I haven’t seen any yet.

Further apprehension came from the fact that the friend I’d planned this whole trip with, Stephen Hartley, received an internship offer from Bain Consulting, and so had to leave the day after(!) the USA match, leaving me on my own for about 4 weeks. I’m not the most organised, and this would force me to have to use my brain to work out where to go and where to stay. I haven’t been a ‘backpacker’ for the longest time, so I did what everyone backpacker does and bought the Lonely Planet guide as my saviour. So far, things have worked out.

I arrived in Cape Town, and instantly you can see how much it means to the locals. They are elated to be hosting fans from across the world, and have all been very hospitable. I heard my first vuvuzelas pretty promptly. Oh my god, vuvuzelas. In and of themselves, they aren’t annoying. When people randomly blow them during the day, directly at you, or in the middle of the night, they are hellish. I decided on the second day to perform a mind-trick and convince myself that they weren’t annoying (otherwise the World Cup would be unbearable). It sort of worked. I mean, the trick is, to get one yourself, and then they become surprisingly fun. Luckily at the England game there weren’t that many, but I now have ear-plugs anyway. I was indoors at Jo’burg airport when South Africa scored their first goal, and it was scarily loud. But I mean, it was fantastic to see all the singing and dancing. South Africans are passionate about their football.

This brings me to England. The England vs. USA match is the first England game I have ever been to. I was crazy excited. In fact, everyone was. I’d had a cameo appearance on Sky News and Norwegian TV earlier in the day, where I’d predicted a 3-1 victory. I’ve recorded videos of the fans before the match and you can just see how badly they wanted England to do well. Everyone was confident. There was lots of singing. Until the equaliser. It’s a little sad, but when the team actually needed support, my area of the crowd actually went quiet. A Mancunian behind me started laying into Jamie Carragher. One fan was cursing Emile Heskey (who I thought played well enough). There were shouts directed at ‘Fat Frank’ to pull his finger out, and at Lennon too. Oh and at Shaun Wright-Phillips (I confess, I did too, he’s rubbish, but don’t get me started on Peter Crouch, I’d rather play with 10 men than with Peter “I can’t head the ball” Crouch). At Old Trafford, the crowd never stops supporting Manchester United, imploring them to “attack, attack, attack” if ever we are losing. I felt that the players picked up on the crowd unsettling, and then their focus immediately shifted from trying to play well to worrying about what the fan/media backlash will be. Being in the stadium heightens the emotions you feel significantly, (both the joy and the despair), so much so that by the end, some of the English fans felt like they’d wasted their money coming out to support the team.

The interaction between the two sets of fans was mostly positive. Of course, the English are a lot more mean than the Americans, and when one guy a few rows back tried to get a “U-S-A, U-S-A” chant going, about 50 English fans turned around and serenaded him with “You’re sh*t, and you know you are, you’re sh*t, and you know you are”, which was actually quite funny. One England fan in front of me, who insisted on smoking even though the stadiums are non-smoking, tried to get a “You’re only speaking English cos of us, you’re only speaking English cos of us” chant going, which annoyed me (it’s a crap chant), and so I reminded him that we would be speaking German if it wasn’t for the Americans. He looked totally baffled. Until he came back with “they only came in at the 11th hour”, which is a rubbish rebuttal to my point anyway. Does this make me a bad England fan? Maybe, but I just can’t bring myself to trash talk Americans. They are so nice, and I like that so many have come out despite ‘soccer’ being their 6th sport or so. Germans, Italians or French, no problem.

I did meet one German fan on the street in Cape Town, who was incredibly, well, German. I asked him how he thought Germany would do. His response was, “we’ll win it or get to the final”, completely confidently, without a doubt in the world. I suggested that losing Ballack may have been a blow. “It doesn’t matter who plays, we are Germany, we always win”. I had no comeback to that. It was frustrating because it was true. I saw one Irish fan call a French fan “cheat, cheat, cheat” at one of the bars, and the French guy looked completely perplexed. I translated for him. His response was “but every country does that”, to which I responded “no they don’t”. Thierry Henry, what have you done? There is not a single neutral fan out here who wants France to do well, and inevitably any discussion of their team brings up the ‘cheat’ label almost reflexively.

I’m now in Johannesburg, staying with a friend who works for McKinsey Consulting, and am writing this from their office. The weather is warm, and the city seems lively (at least the places I have been to thus far). I’ll update on the touristy stuff I have done later (hiking Table Mountain, visiting the wineries). Suffice to say, this country is fantastic. It is such a shame that the British media have given such a negative portrayal of it. There is so much to see, a very interesting history, and a great people. I’m looking forward to going to Port Elizabeth, Durban, Kruger National Park and doing the Garden Route along the south. It’s not too expensive, cheaper than London. I hope more fans fly out for the knock-out stages, presuming England get there.

In-ger-land, In-ger-land, In-ger-land! We can still hope.