Here we go with another PBP special provided by Ginger. She attended the USA - Slovenia match a couple days ago and has kindly prepared a report on the game and her experiences attending the match. Enjoy and be sure to pass the website along to your family, friends and colleagues. Cheers, and Happy Father's Day!
When I applied for my World Cup tickets back in February, I remember being disappointed that the USA vs. England match was no longer available and I had to "settle" for the matches against Slovenia and Algeria. It turns out I couldn't have been more lucky in terms of ticket acquisition, as the game against Slovenia was one of the most exciting of the tournament (and controversial, to be discussed later) and then now the US is in a "must-win" position against Algeria coming up.
Friday's game was in Ellis Park stadium, which is in the heart of downtown Johannesburg. The surrounding area is much like downtown Los Angeles 15 years ago... it's half derelict, dirty, crowded and one gets the feeling that in 15 or 20 years it might become a gentrified, vibrant neighborhood. Unfortunately, that time hasn't come, so we decided to brave the park and ride facilities at University of the Witswatersrand instead of parking nearby and walking ourselves. I must give hats off to FIFA and South Africa for doing a great job organizing the park and ride. I purchased my ticket over the internet, picked it up at my local supermarket, and everything went very smoothly. We arrived three hours before the match began and parked on the campus. We then joined a host of local South African and USA fans, piling onto buses decorated with the World Cup logo. The buses were plentiful and departed regularly. We were then driven to Ellis Park, which took about 30 minutes. Spirits were high on the bus with singing, cheering, and requisite vuvuzela blasts out the window. We passed apartment buildings with kids watching from balconies, many of which were waving and holding USA flags--we were pretty pleased to see them.
Once we reached the stadium, we disembarked and joined a cheerful throng of spectators heading for the entrance. We did have to go through a metal detector and bag check, where they confiscated the stick that my giant USA flag was attached to, but they gave me the flag back. I would say that was my only grump about the entire event (aside from the crap ref) as how could I wave my flag vigorously with no stick? What irked me further was that when we got inside the stadium, some people made it in with their flags intact, so there was a disconnect somewhere.
Anyway, the audience was probably about 75% pro-USA and they showed it! There were lots of people in jerseys and jackets, some guys dressed up like Uncle Sam, some gentlemen dressed up like George Washington and a group of girls in bikinis with USA drawn on their stomachs. They were quite popular as I'm sure you can imagine. We also ran into a few Slovenian fans, most of whom were friendly and wanted to take pictures with us. One crew were extremely inebriated and tried to kiss me, luckily I deflected and managed to avoid being mauled by a drunk Slovenian in one of their Charlie Brown team jerseys. I ask you to ponder which is worse--vuvuzela blasts or unwanted Slovenian tongues trying to reach down your throat? I prefer the former.
We got to our seats and settled in to await the start of the match. Anticipation was high and the stands were filling up quickly. The final attendance was later posted to be over 45,000, nearly capacity for the stadium.
When the match kicked off, the US seemed to be playing anemically, and it showed with the two goals scored by Slovenia in the first half. The crowd cheered and started up with "USA, USA, USA!" anytime it seemed like the US would mount a successful attack but again and again we were disappointed. When the halftime whistle blew, many of the US fans sat down in their seats almost as if they wanted to regroup. Most of the South Africans, however, kept tooting right along on their vuvuzelas and seemed just excited to be there. I brought earplugs and a vuvuzela of my own, so I was happy to join in the chorus when appropriate.
Luckily, the US team that doesn't suck actually showed up for the second half, and tied things up with truly spectacular goals from Landon Donovan and Michael Bradley (the coach's son). The crowd went nuts with Donovan's goal and stayed high energy for the rest of the half. I actually have a video on my phone of the infamous "no-goal" that was disallowed by the now vilified Koman Coulibaly. One thing that is frustrating about attending a live sporting match is that you have no way of seeing a comprehensive replay of fouls or goals and there are no announcers to explain anything to you. The whole crowd was completely thrown for a loop when Coulibaly disallowed the goal and we all booed quite vigorously. We could see clearly that he wasn't off side, and Coulibaly never explained, even to the US team, what the foul was that he claimed invalidated the score. Almost everyone that I have seen today wants to talk about how the US got robbed--even England fans think we did, which means that it really was an egregious error on the ref's part.
When the game ended, despite the atrocious performance from the Malian ref, spirits were high and everyone was looking forward to the match against Algeria on Wednesday. England and Algeria obliged by scratching out a 0-0 tie later in the evening, which means that if the US wins we will advance. A tie against Algeria would make things more tricky, and there are plenty of websites that have already run the numbers so I won't go into them here. I was so excited to have the chance to see a tremendous come from behind performance from the US national team. Hopefully we can stop allowing early goals and have refs that can actually see and aren't on the Slovenian payroll so we can beat Algeria on Wednesday!
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