My luck continues in South Africa, and this morning I connected with the driver who was picking up four Americans at the airport, bringing them to A&A’s place, and then taking two of them to the USA Algeria game. So of course I tagged along for the ride, and the Americans were the same guys that went with me to the USA/Slovenia game and the driver, Ralze, was the same one who gave us a tour of the area around Ellis Park Stadium and before picking them up, he gave me and my Mexican friends a tour of the parking facility at the airport.
We left the hotel hoping to get there early enough to enjoy the stadium atmosphere. The area around the stadium was covered with red, white and blue in every direction—flags, painted faces, scarves and of course, thousands of U.S. National Team jerseys. The passion for the game was so intense that a couple of my friends and I gave it a shot and sang our National Anthem, which was overtaken by the thousands of people singing – a very good thing.
As tortures go, watching our team come very close to elimination from the World Cup ranks high up there with the worst of the worst tortures known to mankind. The boys played good soccer, creating several scoring opportunities including three in front of the goal in the first half and four more in the second half but could not put the ball in the net during the 90 minutes. The torturing started with Djebbour hitting the crossbar in the sixth minute!
Then we scored a goal to be nullified because of offside… it was close and if I check the video it may have been a good goal. When your team creates a lot of scoring opportunities but keeps missing them, you start thinking about how it will just take one or two quick counter attacks from the opponent for them to score the winning goal. it happens a lot in soccer. Then, Algeria’s Yahia gets send off within the first minute of added time, and Algeria loses composure and concentration enough for us to push one final attack, and to have Donovan score and release the emotional outburst throughout the stadium from all of us and many people from other countries which were supporting our team… just in time to prevent a heart attack!
In other news, England won and moved on. This was good because Adrian was happy and managed to find me a room for tonight – I was going to sleep on the couch in the lobby because the hotel had a lot guests checking in today. Just another great day at the World Cup in South Africa!
No comments:
Post a Comment