Todo futbol !

Travelling during the World Cup in South America

The Shakira anthem has been playing almost non-stop every day for the last six weeks while
while we have be watching all the matches from South America, where people live and breathe football.

It's been a bit of a challenge at times to structure our travel schedule qround matches, however finding a tv set has never ever been a problem. To my surprise, Steph watched with great enthusiasm making me choose which matches we were allowed to watch each day (only fair).

A proper setup - bbq with English commentary and even a TV in the bathroom. While it was a little hard to find matches in English, one of my favorite activities was counting the length of goal cries using the game clock. 29 seconds is the current record.

And so we followed football everywhere, from the lone TV on the peaks by Machu Picchu to a radio aboard a straw boat on lake Titikaka. I think that the next best thing to being inside the actual host country fiesta, is experiencing it from a country where football is passionate life or death and where televisions might even be hurled out the window.

Our month-long buildup to the 'Mundial' was actually from Argentina. Diego Maradona would make press conferences every single morning, live on all 6 public tv stations. I've never seen so much attention given even to a head of state.


Maradona on the street walls of La Boca - Argergentina´s original rags-to-riches bad boy. Love him or hate him, he has his place atop football history in Argenina and had the countries fate in his hands during this world cup.

We watched these matches from countless locations and with countless supporters from around the world. One Brazilian had to hurry home to be home to watch the tournament without work, travel or any other distraction for the entire month of the beautiful game.

I did have to miss part of the Inti Raymi festival for a Denmark Match. I think I was the only person in all of Cusco indoors at the time. But sometimes you need to miss the sacrifice of a llama to watch your countrymen play for world pride. Even if they did lose.

My favorite teams went home early this time. Denmark got a late start that was somehow destroyed by Japanese free kicks, England could put little together at all, and France went home in utter discrage - a steep price to pay for putting any trust at all in Raymond Domenech.

A lonely and tired Argentinian goal in El Calafate. Argentina were a bit too cockey for me in the end, fielding a team of stars and individuals.

I was happy to see Chile give it a good run to the chants of chi-chi-chi Le-Le-Le, especially after watching the ´Oojo Rojos´ (Red Eyes) documentary about their cinderlella story after a decades of national dissapointment. It was also nice side effect to see little bit of attention finally given to world soccer from the US.

Of course many of our alegences were silenced by the many German backpackers cheering on their team as they streamrolled through to the semi-final (and if there is one thing we have learned on this trip, it is that the Germans are everywhere!).

We actually found a great Dutch bar and German tavern to watch the respective semi-finals. Most of all I have enjoyed watching a hungry Dutch team use both teamwork and raw talent to vinidcate their absence from the finals four years ago. Spain may play a creative and convining game, but the Dutch look unstoppable.

My prediction
Holland 3-1