As the tournament progressed and teams were knocked out, one thing I noticed was the make up of the fans changing. The great thing about the group stages are that fans from every country are there. It was a bit sad, for example, when the Mexicans, Swiss and Americans left.

Generally, we don’t hear much about football in South America, Asia and even Africa. Encountering fans from those countries, however, really does drill home to you how much of a global game football is, and how people are so passionate about it the world over. And just as our news focuses so exclusively on England and our players, it’s nice to see that other countries typically enter the World Cup as enthusiastic, optimistic and hopeful as we are, even if the targets are different (and probably more realistic).

After the England-USA match, I went to watch Brazil vs. N. Korea at Ellis Park in Jo-burg. This game wasn’t very eventful (apart from me nearly freezing to death), but it had a big curiosity factor because of the North Koreans. No they were not terrible footballers, and yes they did have fans, 300 of them, who were apparently hand-picked to come and support the team, and did not know each other. Their ring-leader ensured they all cheered in co-ordination, which was funny to watch. I was hoping for an upset but Maicon (who had a fab tournament) saw to that. Still, keeping it to 0-0 at half-time was a mini-achievement.

I then headed to Durban with Ryan, my host in Johannesburg, to catch the Spain-Switzerland match. This was a great game, I was sat with the Swiss fans, who were ecstatic at beating Spain. They were singing in the stadium for a long while after the final whistle, and as I was still down about the England result, I tried to find as many miserable Spanish fans as possible to talk to so that I could feel better. And boy were they miserable! Durban is a great city, surprisingly warm, and with a great beach on which all the fan activity was centred. This was the first of many long drives I would do in South Africa.

Next up was Cape Town, where England were playing Algeria. Again, before the match the atmosphere was incredible. Us silly England fans had managed to deceive ourselves that we were actually a good team and that we’d beat Algeria. The stadium was fantastic. However, this game was probably the lowest point of the trip for me. I spent the entire next day in my room pretty miserable. Firstly, the fans I were sitting next to were ridiculous. It hadn’t even been 2 minutes and a very vocal fan nearby was shouting his head off about Steven Gerrard being crap and how Joe Cole should replace him. The guy next to me passionately hated Emile Heskey and was clamouring for Peter Crouch to play, and I foolishly reminded him that Crouch wasn’t all that (didn’t he end the season as a substitute for Spurs?), and the guy went nuts. He accused me of not watching England games (and I fear, of not being a true England fan because I’m ethnically Indian), and did the typical chav aggressive thing of leaning into you as they talk and generally becoming quite unpleasant. I need to learn to not debate people in the stadium, but I can’t help myself when I hear people spout the rubbish that our tabloids write (criticising the players for how much they earn, for example).

Anyhow, the vast majority of fans continued supporting the team, yes we played rubbish, but it was only a small segment of fans behind the goal that actually did the much reported booing after the game. Everyone was very disappointed, but I was expecting the Algerians to defend solidly and they are not a bad team, they beat the African champions to qualify for the tournament after all.

My spirits were eventually lifted by the owner of the guesthouse I stayed in in Cape Town. He pointed out that some England fans had draped a flag over the edge of Table Mountain, which could be seen from all across the city. He then offered to take me on a drive around the city, in his vintage 30 year old pristine Merc. I found out that he collected them and had 3. As a proud Cape Townian he was eager to show me how beautiful the city and surrounding areas were and we had an interesting discussion about the politics of the region, FIFA and their corruptness, and Nelson Mandela. Interestingly enough, I also found out that his mother worked for the British Secret Services.

My next match was Portugal vs. North Korea, also in Cape Town, which was exciting for me as I was right by the pitch and genuinely thought that if I shouted loud enough, Cristiano Ronaldo would be able to hear me and I’d be able to somehow persuade him to come back to United. After about 5 minutes of shouting “Ronny” (his MUFC nickname), I realised this wasn’t working, and instead proceeded to watch the Portuguese score 7 goals. I also realised that he is that vain, as he checked himself out on the big screens in the stadium after every piece of skill he did.

England’s final group match was in Port Elizabeth, an 8 hour drive from Cape Town. It’s the longest drive I’ve ever done, but it’s on the famous Garden Route along the south coast, which makes it quite easy. You see spectacular views pretty much all the way (or in my case, until it gets dark). Port Elizabeth is an industrial city, and is probably my least favourite place in SA. I’m sure I was ripped off for my accommodation that night, the first time I felt that way in South Africa. The game itself however was probably one of the highlights of the trip. England played really well (i.e. they managed to follow their manager’s instructions and press the opposition players in possession), and we should have won the group. This is why being an England fan sucks so much, if they were outright crap you’d have no hope, but every now and then they put on a performance which makes you think they can actually play (beating Croatia 4-1 away, beating Holland 4-1 in 96, the 5-1 hammering of Germany, beating Argentina in 02 etc).

At the end, I was running around ecstatic in the stadium, until I found out we finished second because of Landon Donovan’s goal for the US. This was a big blow, I now had tickets to the wrong matches, and it meant we’d end up playing Germany, which could only end in defeat.

I then flew back to Johannesburg, and experienced a bit of the nightlife, which is lively, but entails passive smoking a pack of cigarettes over the course of the night. Not fun. I find Joburg’s alleged “no-go neighbourhoods” really weird. The places where it’s “safe” to hang out are random giant malls/shopping areas that are surrounded by massive walls. Apparently I heard that some American fans thought the walls were to keep the animals out. Haha.

It’s not safe to walk from here to there allegedly, and that just puts you in a funny frame of mind. And I hate to say it, but it also very much felt like apartheid, but by another name. Yes black people are allowed everywhere, but there’s still an apartheid of opportunity between the blacks and whites. Perhaps calling it economic apartheid is a better way to describe it.

Since we had tickets to the group winners match, we drove to Rustenburg the next day to watch USA vs. Ghana. I was torn on who to support, but sided with the Ghanaians as it would be terrible for all the African teams to be out of the Cup. That night after the game, we drove to Sun City, a mini-vegas like attraction they’ve built in the middle of nowhere, and where the Ghana team ended up staying. It’s been reported about their relaxed attitude during the tournament, and I saw it first hand as all the players were just hanging out, talking, laughing and relaxing with the fans. I took a pic with Gyan, the player who ended up missing the crucial penalty against Uruguay.

Then, it was a mad 500km dash to Bloemfontein to watch England vs. Germany the next morning. It took us approximately 6 hours to get there, and we arrived about 20 minutes before kick-off (after a mildly scary encounter with a dodgy cop). We were seated with the German fans. The only possible thing that can make a German goal against England worse, is a German goal against England when you are sitting in the midst of hundreds of wildly celebrating Germans. This was also one of the lows of the trip, but really, I never expected us to win. My theory is that a fully fit England team has the potential to match most teams in the world, but the moment we lose a few players, we aren’t good enough. And that’s what happens every tournament (apart from in 96 when they stayed fit and we got to the Euro semis). 98 – Beckham is sent off, 02 – Gerrard missing, Beckham unfit, 04 – Rooney breaks foot, 06 – Rooney unfit, Owen breaks knee, 10 – Ferdinand, Owen and Beckham missing. I genuinely think with Ferdinand, we wouldn’t have conceded that ridiculous first goal from a goal-kick, nor those several counter-attack goals. Oh, I must qualify the above by saying I assume we have a decent keeper, and I don’t count David James as good enough. He made some good saves, but the second goal he turned away from the ball and the third goal he dived out of the way! I also think the disallowed goal impacted the game. It deflated England. I could see the ball cross the line from my seat, and as soon it happened I turned to look at the linesman who was madly sprinting back towards the line. He obviously was out of position to judge, and then their keeper did the right thing and acted like nothing happened. If we were Brazilian/Italian/Spanish we would have just all ignored the referee and instantly gone and celebrated the goal by the corner-flag, thereby pressuring them to give us the goal. But we are England, and we suck at referee manipulation.

This is when I had my second altercation with an England fan. In a bar afterwards, I was having a friendly chat with some fans until one guy started saying Capello was rubbish and wrong for the job because he’s foreign. I then reminded the fan about the last time we had an English coach, we actually failed to qualify for the tournament, and his face went red and I was told to “move away”. Twat.

At this point, I think I realised I wouldn’t stay for the whole tournament, and was looking for ways to sell tickets. As it turns out, I ended up going to one more game, Argentina vs. Germany, which unfortunately the Germans won. It was still very cool to watch Messi in the flesh and to think that I was only a hundred metres or so away from one of the all-time greats in the game, Diego Maradona.

And thus ended my trip. I sold my tickets to a dutch guy who paid in cash and who kept changing the location of our meeting point, from my hotel lobby to his hotel lobby, and then to his hotel room, which left me somewhat apprehensive. I think he was a bit of a big shot because he knew all the hotel managers (and who carries thousands of USD around with them?!). But, everything was fine.

If you are into football, then going to a World Cup is possibly the best thing you can do. It feels like being in football heaven, you can watch matches everyday, go to the games, engage with pretty much anyone about football, and have a holiday at the same time. I’m really glad I did it, and would heavily recommend South Africa to anyone (bar Jo’burg and Port Elizabeth). If you stay near the coasts, you’ll be fine. I didn’t do a proper safari but still got to see some animals in a national park. It is quite inspiring to have wild animals wander freely around you.

Finally, an extended trip anywhere always beats a short trip as you become more of a traveller, and less of a tourist with assumptions. Based on my gap year 6 month world-trip, I believe it takes at least two weeks to genuinely pick up the vibe of a place.

And with that, it’s back to reality for me.

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.

In my infinite wisdom, I also bought tickets (TST7s for those in the know, which means it follows the group winner all the way to the final) to all of North Korea’s matches (i.e. vs. Brazil, Ivory Coast and Portugal), as a way of guaranteeing my tickets to England vs. Brazil in the semis and the final itself. Therefore, I have for sale 2 tickets to all of North Korea’s group games, and then match 54 and match 57, which should be Brazil’s 2nd round game and their quarter-finals, likely against Holland (presuming both finish top of their groups). If anybody is interested in those, I’ll sell them at whatever the secondary market says their value is. Please pass this on!

So, I am making a point of writing a pointless blog post, which should hopefully jolt me into writing something interesting in the near future.

I left Live Current Media a short-while ago (although I am still consulting for them). I just went to Startup School this weekend in San Francisco and got what I wanted, energy, inspiration and some knowledge. I am at that stage again where I’m trying to figure out what I want to do next. I have the chance to take some time to carefully think about what it is that will inspire me for the next 5-10 years (incidentally, I’m still trying to get around the fact that your horizon influences your goals so much. To date, I’ve been fairly short-termist, thinking in a maximum of 1-2 year blocks. But doing anything significant requires you to think in much bigger chunks of time, which I am not used to).

To that end, I’m currently reading Awaken the Giant within after I stumbled on this fantastic Ted talk, Why we do what we do (via Harjeet).

Firstly, that there is no leadership emerging in the US take control and stem the panic that is spreading throughout the financial markets. When no one knows what’s going on, someone has to step up (and I don’t just mean reading from a tele-prompter, Bush) and provide some direction. We are seeing nothing. I guess it just reinforces that the current President is a big fat fail. The sad thing is, he’d have no credibility anyway.

Secondly, I’m irritated by this knee-jerk anti-bailout reaction (“$700bn to the fat cats!”). Check this diagram which I’m borrowing from the BBC:

It doesn’t help when the media sensationalises things. There is no $700bn going into some Wall Street bankers pockets. First off, $450bn of this bailout money is conditional.

Also, see that arrow pointing from the Banks to the Gov’t? That’s a stake in the banks being given to the taxpayers. So you’re not just losing money, you’re gaining an asset, and the chances are, at a very good price.

There’s a chance the US Gov’t could end up making a profit out of the situation when the housing market recovers, which it inevitably will. This credit bust is definitely a mess, but this doesn’t mean there won’t be any credit in the future. We need to think 5-10 years into the future. Things will recover, they always do.

The closest thing to this I’ve ever studied were the currency crises that happened in Asia in 1998 (indeed they were my savior in my final international economics exam). The big lesson I learned was that self-fulfilling prophecies can occur in the markets. If everyone loses faith in a currency, then it will crash, even if nothing has fundamentally changed.

The same thing can happen with banks. If we think some are going to fail, sell its shares, then we can help make it fail. So to counter-act that you need some pretty aggressive action, and even if it isn’t perfect, people are misunderstanding that doing nothing could be much, much worse (I mentioned that US Gov’t debt is not looking as secure as it once was – and that underpins everything in the current global economy).

If this credit problem is not solved and confidence restored, then it is easy for the effects to spill over to the main economy. The worst would be for otherwise healthy firms to stop receiving credit, be forced to lay people off in a downturn, add to unemployment, and then just make the whole macro condition worse for everyone. Credit plays a vital role in smoothing out consumption and investment cycles – so the banks that facilitate this and are otherwise healthy need to be backed up.

It turns out that the bill not passing may have been because of political fighting/posturing – not economic concerns. This is frankly infuriating:

“Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., the whip, estimated that Pelosi’s speech changed the minds of a dozen Republicans who might otherwise have supported the plan.

Frank said that was a remarkable accusation by Republicans against Republicans: “Because somebody hurt their feelings, they decided to punish the country.”

I guess I’m incredibly lucky to have left banking, and moved to Canada. The funny thing is I actually interned on a credit structuring desk – the very people that created this mess.

This is the source data in a graph:

Patrick points out that the y axis doesn’t start at zero, making things look worse than they are, but it’s an index starting at 100 (the baseline is emboldened), not zero.

Anyhow, here’s the ‘proper’ chart as Patrick mocked it together:

Still pretty worrying.

Inflation becomes threatening when expectations in the economy change significantly. The big oil shocks of the 70s triggered huge wage price spirals (prices rise, salaries rise, prices then rise, salaries rise more) and all of a sudden we have runaway inflation which screws with a lot of things in the economy (that’s my technical explanation! I shudder to think what my old Econ tutors at Oxford would think if they read this).

Anyway, there’s (anecdotal) evidence this is now happening. Not really good times, high inflation really messes with the efficiency of the overall economy.

Incidentally, the pay rise was below the RPI rate, so this was a tad cheeky, they just reduced everyone’s real wage. Time for mum to move to Canada.

So here it is: Kul’s tumblr.

The reason for me being so bullish? Well, I have a lot of anecdotal evidence to the impact its having (it’s on all the Indian tv channels all the time at home), the games are all near sellouts despite it being in the first half of the tournament, the Facebook game is addictive and busy, and I just read this post by Adam Rabiner over on the Live Current blog.

To quote from the Economic Times:

“The ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL) matches have virtually taken the life out of cinema theatres and television programmes….

Star Plus sources said the fresh Television Audience Measurement (TAM) ratings are expected in a day or two. However, till April 22, the IPL dominated the TAM ratings.”

And, I also just had the photo editor from the WSJ contact me for photos, you may even hear about it in the US!

And hey, the IPL has its very own Moneyball-esque Oakland Athletics: The Rajasthan Royals.

Read here for Cricinfo‘s view.