Vuvuzela South Africa

Today is the last Football Friday of the 2010 World Cup. It seems like it all want past in a multi-coloured blur of excitement and amazing soccer.

Bafana Bafana makes South Africa Proud

We waited so long from that first announcement that South Africa would host the 2010 World Cup, the first on African soil, to the kickoff, just four weeks ago on 11 June at Soccer City in Jozi when Bafana Bafana held Mexico to a draw and Sipiwe Tshabalala score one of the most beautiful goals of the entire 2010 World Cup –in fact  the first goal of the tournament. (I’d show you the video, but FIFA has copyright and has taken all the copies off YouTube).

Do we even remember that Football Fridays were a campaign of Brand SA to get the country behind Bafana Bafana and to catch some “gees” for the 2010 World Cup. It took off quite slowly, with only die-hard soccer supporters and a patriotic few sporting yellow jerseys. At first, the jerseys were really hard to get and they were very expensive.

Vuvuzelas, Mirror Socks, and Flags

As we got closer to the big even, more jerseys and T-shirts came onto the market and Fridays became decidedly more yellow. Vuvuzelas started appearing all over the place – really cheap and in many colours.

Then the flags came out and the mirror socks and before we new it South Africa was swept up in a Bafana Bafana and World Cup frenzy like nobody had ever expected.

People were writing to me asking me where they could buy a vuvuzela. Flags and mirror socks were available at almost every traffic light and on the roadside and South Africa exploded into colour as the visitors arrived for the tournament.

I have never seen so many flags – car flags – flags hanging out of windows, strung up on masts, painted on faces…. everywhere. And one could hear the paaarp of vuvuzelas all over.

Waka Waka Official World Cup Song

I never really got the diski dance, but it wasn’t long before I got fully into the Waka Waka Official World Cup song and was going Waka Waka to everybody. (I must admit I wasn’t happy at first – nothing against Shakira, but hey we have awesome singers in South Africa)

Last Football Friday

And now that it is the last Football Friday, and we have only two more matches left, let us make a commitment not to stop flying the flag… Can we keep flying the flag,  just for a little bit longer?

OK there won’t be anymore Football Fridays where you can just go up and greet and chat to anyone in a yellow jersey, ’cause you know you have something in common.

But maybe Fridays can just sort of unofficially become a day that we greet one or two strangers and say Yebo or Howzit! – Just for the sake of the beautiful game man!

Check out some cool Football Friday Pics at AwesomeSA

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