Represent Photo’s: Barcelona v Sundowns
For those of us that never got to see the match last week, enjoy our photostory! Our man Adi represented – 2 hour traffic, stadium packed to (over) capacity and great football with an electric incredible energy- we certainly won’t be missing the next one. We can’t wait for 2010!!!
See the photies here..
On Wednesday night I went with a group of six people to see Barcelona take on Mamelodi Sundowns at Loftus Versveld. I am normally very much of the opinion that watching sport on television is the way to go: better angles, no traffic and that kind of thing. Two reasons led to me saying yes to the invitation. Firstly, the friend who asked me is constantly organizing things from which I generally flake out and, secondly, Ronaldinho was going to be there. For me, and about 5,96 billion people, he is the ultimate footballer. The other 36 million is the population of Argentina who still think Maradona is the guy.
FC Barcelona was recently rated as one of the top six club sides ever to play the game, according to a recent poll conducted on my couch. The others are Liverpool, Manchester United, AC Milan, Real Madrid and the legendary Norwood Eagles under-nine team of the late 1980’s. Couple this with the fact that, some-the-hell-how, Sundowns managed to get them to Pretoria fielding a first string side and you have the reason why I was willing to go bumper to bumper from Killarney all the way to the city of embassies, gravy trains and the mighty Blue Balls.
With my friend Mario in the car we had ample time to figure out the following truths en route: everyone listens to 702, Jackie Selebi and Tony Yengeni are sinister fools, nobody invites me to poker anymore, and we need Winston Churchill to sort out the Taxi industry.
Three members of our group have names ending in the letter O, and somewhere in this it was organized that we could park at the Italian Embassy, a Cape Dutch building two blocks from Loftus. From here we walked to the stadium.
The game was a sellout – think Celine Dion, not Hansie Cronje. By 19:55, 60 000 spectators were crammed into 59 999 seats. Up to a thousand ticket holders weren’t allowed inside because it turns out that the officials tasked with gate control were making thousands of rand selling entry to non-ticket holders. Imagine how happy Frau Eva Schweinsteiger will be when she flies here to see her little Bastian play his last World Cup, only to find that her seat has been sold by the guy from Tstotsi for 200 bucks and a Chappie. To be honest, though, I didn’t have any problems and only heard about the mess-ups on 702 afterwards. At the turnstile I made my peace with God, accepted a possible stampede death and headed in.
Once inside and settled in my very own crack between two seats I took a good look around. Big stadium. Nice field. Fairly chilled out crowd. I might just survive. The teams came out within five minutes of our arrival. I made my way down to the crowd control fencing and poked my camera through a hole in the wire. I wanted to snap one of the big three: Ronaldinho, Samuel Eto’o or Deco. If Barcelona was an album, they’d be the hits and I wasn’t there for full album appreciation hour. Unfortunately I didn’t get any good shots, but I sure saw these guys and to say it was thrilling would be just fine. These are people we hear about hundreds of times over the years and here, in this moment, they stand in the flesh five meters away. It sounds like gushing but I think it’s more like awe at the combination of fame, personal space and path crossing that makes me tingle.
Before kickoff we were addressed by Gauteng Premier Mbhazima Shilowa who we were told to thank for letting us be there and how much he does for us. Very Animal Farm. We were then promised that ‘a portion’ of proceeds would go to Unicef and Nelson’s Kiddies Kitty. The game started and I ran back to my seat. 30 seconds later the crowd roared as, almost unbelievably, Surprise Moriri lived up to his name and Moriri’d one to the left of Barca’s goalkeeper. For the next 75 minutes or so Sundowns did a great job of defending their lead and twice came close to doubling it. It was an admirable performance. Ronaldinho didn’t look like he was trying, but after a while I realized that this is just the way he plays – no red faced huffing and puffing for him. He is so skillful and such a good distributor of the ball that he really does prove the validity of the whole letting the ball do the work idea.
With 15 minutes left it looked as if Sundowns might pull off the upset, but substitute Santiago Ezquero equalized from a Ronaldinho free kick and two minutes later Ronny, who I’m convinced was the inspiration for Star Wars character Ja Ja Binx, provided a sublime airborne pass to Marc Crosas who slammed it home past Sundowns ‘keeper Calvin Marlin. Game Over.
On the way back to little Italy, just after I found a nice young man’s hand in my pocket and gave it back to him, we stopped at a charming little place called Eastwoods, where we were served Jagermeisters from test tubes and Chivaz Regal, which had been lying around for 18 years, apparently justifying its price tag of five trillion rand per shot.
The experience was excellent and I can only imagine how mind-blowingly thrilling 2010 will be. There needs to be many more matches of this size though because the organizers are in serious need of big game practice if they are to develop the process into a smooth one. We can’t have little old Miss Schweinsteiger’s handbag being placed under new management after she has been turned away by an entrepreneurial and morally flexible security team.
