World Cup

So much for the World Cup theories

July 05, 2010
Spain's continued success hasn't surprised anyone
Spain's continued success hasn't surprised anyone

So there we have it—only the semis and the final to go, and all the big theories about the World Cup have been proved wrong. This was going to be Africa's Cup, but with Ghana's heart-breaking penalty miss with the last kick of the game against Uruguay it was not to be. This was going to be the Cup in which South America swept the board, but there is only one South American team in the semis. This was going to be the Cup in which Europe was finally going to be put in its place, but three out of the four semi-finalists are European. Finally, after the exit of France and Italy in the group stages, this was going to be the Cup of surprises, but there is a decent chance that many people's favourite three weeks ago, Spain, is going to win.

After England's unfortunate exit, every single team I have adopted with any enthusiasm has crashed out—Portugal (I apologise, a bit of an aberration), Ghana (I even bought a Ghana shirt) and plucky Paraguay (they would have been only the fourth land-locked country to get to the semis. Can you guess the other three? For the answer see below).

I had a ticket for the Ghana v Uruguay tragedy in Johannesburg (and a superb ticket too, thanks to Aggreko, the company that supplies some of the electrical generators for the competition). It was a thriller. Ghana's supposed journeymen—from clubs like Rennes and Hoffenheim and Wigan and Sunderland, some of them not even in the top national divisions—played out of their skins, and little Anthony Annan almost made up for the absence of Ghana's injured star (and arguably the best mid-fielder in the world), Michael Essien.

At half-time I bumped into Arsene Wenger in the men's toilets and he seemed confident that Ghana was going to win. I suggested that he solve Arsenal's goal-keeping problem by buying the Dutch keeper Maarten Stekelenburg, who currently plays for Ajax and has been my goalie of the tournament so far. Wenger looked at me rather pityingly and moved on. I then bumped into Paul Elliott, the former Chelsea and England defender who is part of England's team to try to secure the World Cup in 2018. He was friendly and seemed genuinely interested in my idea that the old men at FIFA who make the decision will be more impressed by Bobby Charlton than David Beckham as a front-man for our bid, but perhaps he was just humouring me.

The next day, I watched the remarkable German destruction of Argentina at one of the Fanfests in Jo'burg; it made our own defeat at German hands slightly more bearable. I also discovered from a German fan that Schweinsteiger (one of the unsung stars of the competition) means not so much "pig climber" as "pig stepper"—whatever that is. Later in the evening, at a bar in a trendy part of town, I saw Paraguay narrowly miss completing another great upset against Spain, who started to look very impressive only when Fabregas came on. I will be surprised if he doesn’t start the semi-final against Germany.

So that completes my stint in South Africa. Notwithstanding what I said in the first paragraph, it has been a Cup and a country of surprises, mainly welcome ones. I have travelled in an eastern arc from Port Elizabeth in the south, via a few days in a rural area in the Eastern Cape, to Durban and then on to Johannesburg via the Drakensberg mountains. Everywhere I went, from a Xhosa wedding in the Eastern Cape, via lunch with a Mugabe-supporting "comrade" in Grahamstown, to bantering with young lads at the main market in Durban and on to urbane Jo'burg, people of all races have been welcoming and enthusiastic about their country. I did not feel unsafe or threatened by crime anywhere. The only time I received uncomprehending (bordering on hostile) looks from black South Africans was in a dead-end place called Mthatha—a sort of Wolverhampton of the Eastern Cape (and near where Nelson Mandela was born)—but I was later told by someone who knows the area well that they did not understand English and felt embarrassed about it.

Of course in many ways the country's a mess. Inequality is the highest in the world, its employment rate is the lowest in Africa, entrepreneurial spirit seems almost non-existent (especially among black South Africans, most of whom are very poorly educated), red tape inherited from the Apartheid state continues to stop lots of good things from happening in both town and country, and far too many people are just standing around doing nothing. And after the World Cup it is feared that many of them will be hounding out the more employable African illegal immigrants, mainly from Zimbabwe. Add to that the fact that South Africa is, in effect, a corrupt one-party state with a small black business elite that now forms a crony capitalist class.

And yet she flies. It is a very big place, with big blue skies, an American-style profligacy with space and a sense of nation-building optimism reignited by the World Cup. Corruption may be rife but there is a powerful and independent press and judiciary—while I was there the former head of the police force, a leading ANC figure called Jackie Selebi, was found guilty of corruption and is likely to go to prison for several years.

I have just landed back at Heathrow and there is the unmistakeable wail of the vuvuzela in the baggage reclaim. I am bringing back three of them as presents for my children, but I pray that the vuvuzela virus will not leak into the English game and nullify the human voice. It has been the one blight on an otherwise tremendous South African World Cup.

Answer to question in para two - Hungary, Austria and Czechoslovakia.