First taste of a live WC match!

Although i had seen umpteen matches in TV and a few from stadium i didn't know what to expect from my first experience with a WC match. To be honest, the quality of football in an average during World Cup has been lower than that of club matches from Europe one is used to and it has taken the festivity surrounding the event to make it up for that lack of quality.

But quality of match was the last thing in my tensed mind and of course, a match involving Argentina never lacks quality (at least for me :P). As we reached the stadium premises the atmosphere became really lively with a sea of blue and white all around. Fans groups, most of them with huge Argentine flags were busy singing the popular songs about the Albiceleste. Some of them took the opportunity to get a click with people from other countries. Some were still busy with last bit of shopping for the match in the FIFA shops and a few were busy following the South Korea Greece match in big screen. We roamed around a bit as there was still more than couple of hours for the match to start and got into action soon , going around and getting clicked with diff people and banners :D

My ticket was in the upper tier and on our way up, we met an appoppan ( read 'old man' ) from Argentina who was so happy to see ppl from India following his national team. He did his bit introducing us to all his friends there and sharing his excitement about fans from India. And yes, the question came, What about the Indian national team :P There is an interesting article about this question which you should go through.

The first glimpse of pitch gave a very different look from the modest pictures i had seen of Ellis park and it was a brilliant view even though from up top. Some of the fan groups were distributing plastic covers to be blown in the blue and white tubes and the whole hour before the match was spent cheering players during warm up and clicking pics.The passion for game was at a different level, a lady with an infant who travelled from Argentina, a man on crutches with a broken leg from Argentina, climbing all the way up the stadium. Seeing all these, i know this is not going to be my last World Cup :)

The match started and it was non-stop action as Argentina created chances at will. The goal from corner was a bit of dejavu from the 2002 WC opener of Argentina vs Nigeria when batistuta scored from corner. Abusing refrees for 'wrong' calls has never been this fun as hundreds of fans near you join you in doing so :) Messi, man i can never do justice to what i saw from him that day with my writing skills :P He seemed to run at the Nigerian defense at will with success except for once or twice through out the whole match.And it was a treat to watch :) Everyone would stand up the moment messi touched the ball with a sense of expectation which was palpable

As we kept missing chances, the crowd grew impatient and the free-kicks/corners for Nigeria in second half were greeted with loud roars from vuvuzela (believe me, it doesn't sound like the buzz of a bee when you hear it in person. in fact it took me a mail from a friend to realize it sounded like a bee in TV :P ) Most of the Argentinean crowd was relaxed, but me and my brother were sitting on edge of our seats as the score remained 1-0. As the final whistle blew, it was an end to the tense few finals minutes and the joy of a first world cup experience was manifolded with the taste of Argentine victory.

On our way back, we met our Argentinean appoppan again and through our continued 'spanglish' dumb charades we shared our joy and promised to meet during Argentina's next match. We met another Argentine who translated some other songs for us and as we walked outside the stadium it was a mini-pooram outside with almost a kerala style chenda vadyam and songs to accompany them. That most of the fans were drunk ( i didn't know beer could have so much of effect on ppl! ) made it even more fun as we savoured this last bit of the proceedings of one of the most enthralling days in our life.

On the sad side-effects of this match, watching a high intensity match from stadium makes watching them in TV very very boring. No, this is not cheap jaada :P, it's something that makes the wait for the next match in stadium even better :)