“Blow, blow, blow…your vuvuzela is safe!” reads yesterday’s frontpage of The Sun in Johannesburg. And while it’s not a headline which every aurally-challenged soccer fan wanted to read, it’s been met with cheers here in South Africa, not that you can actually hear them anyway above the BRAAAAAAAAMPPPH of the infernal plastic horns.
A European-led push to have the vuvuzelas banned has been stared down, for now. Several of the European teams have complained about the distraction from the noise, with the Dutch coach unable to talk to his players at an open traning day where 3000 South African kids turned up with their vuvuzelas, and French captain Patrice Evra saying the racket had put his team off in its 0-0 draw against Uruguay. But the chairman of the local FIFA organising committee Danny Jordaan has now issued a statement saying the vuvuzela is safe for the remainder of the 2010 tournament.
“The vuvuzela will not be banned in South Africa,” he said. “The only negative aspect we condemn is when fans blow it during the singing of national anthems and public announcements during the games.” We’ve been here 10 days now and didn’t realise that there had been any anthems of public announcements, or indeed anything other than the continuous drone.
Meanwhile, industrial chaos caused by the vuvuzela continues to spread. After an office worker was sacked last week for blowing in a colleague’s ear, 20 bank workers were dismissed yesterday for ignoring an office ban on sounding the vuvuzelas during last Friday’s opening match between South Africa and Mexico (corrected). When Siphiwe Tshabalala scored to put Bafana Bafana one goal up, the workers all left their desks and ran onto the street sounding their horns. Manager Gerhard Bouewer said they would not be reinstated. “They disobeyed a direct order that they shouldna’t watch TV and blow vuvuzelas because it disturbs customers. I later heard that they had an agreement to blow them outside if Bafana scored, but I was not part of that agreement.”
Dumbest app ever has to be the “iVuvuzela” which has been brought out to coincide with the World Cup. As of this week it’s now been downloaded a staggering 750,000 times, so that people can make sure their iPhone is every bit as annoying as watching a game “It’s so stipud it’s awesome,” was one fan’s review, and it’s hard to disagree with that.
Perhaps the biggest insult to the injury of Australia’s 4-0 capitulation to Germany was the early exit of 10 glamourous women in green and gold from Durban’s Moses Mobhida Stadium. Because of their get-up, the international media believed they were genuine Aussies. But alas, no. They were, in fact, a publicity stunt by Fanatics boss Warren Livingstone. The girls were all local Durban girls and were quite clearly bored to tears by the one-sided contest.
More gratuitous sexism here: When it comes to defending their sponsors, FIFA runs like some kind of paramilitary operation, so it was no surprirse yesterday when 36 extremely hot Dutch women found themselves in deep strife as they took part in an ambush marketing exercise for a beer company. Budweiser is the official beer of the tournament, Coke is the only drink, Visa the only credit card…and FIFA goes to huge lengths to make sure that this is only ever the case at its stadiums and live sites. So when 36 young blonde women, all of wearing the distinctive orange mini dresses which are given away in The Netherlands wuith Bavaria beer, turned up at the Denmark-Netherlands match, FIFA had them detained by the police for several hours. The Bavaria people probably didn’t mind. They got the front page and a massive photo of the girls in The Star undet the headline “Mini-dressed women held”. Bavaria beer chief Peer Swinkels feigned ignorance at the entire thing. “It’s a nice dress,” he said. “Very fashionable. In my opinion people should have the right to wear whatever they want.”
Nice little earner over here for sports merchandisers - as the entire country goes nuts over Bafana Bafana after the one-all draw against Mexico, stores are running out of team jerseys. One shop sold $15,000 worth of t-shirts in an hour. While these numbers are good the official figures as to how much hosting the event will cost South Africa make disturbing reading for the yarpies. The original estimated cost was a loss of around $500 million, it’s not looking more like $6 billion. Ouchy. Something to think about as Australia bids for 2022. There’s a nice local rorts story too - government departments have blown a whopping $2million on tickets for themselves and their mates.
Lift your game, Australia! Our reputation for doing really dumb stuff while drunk overseas is taking a hammering with the official roll-call of criminal tourist hijinks failing to include a single Aussie. It makes good reading: A drunk Peruvian stole a laptop from Lieutant Colonel Mr A. Basi from the Directorate of Priority Crimes, four South African fans stole Coke umbrellas worth $80 from a Coca Cola stand at Soccer City, a Ugandan was charged with stealing a cell phone from a Guinean, an American pinched four laptops, an Indian tourist stole five cameras off his Indian travel companions, a Slovenian and Frenchman charged with DUI, a German accused of assaulting a South African cop, a South African pretending to be a British tourist and running up a massive tab on his room, two Zimbabweans charged with stealing from journalists in Magialasberg.
It’s a strange way to celebrate a 2-0 soccer victory but AFP are reporting that the sale of condoms in Seoul increased fivefold on the evening that South Korea beat Greece. Whatever bakes your potato.
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