When I bought my ticket for this game, I did so with the intent of ironically supporting North Korea, perhaps by making a large "주체" banner. However, after they sank a South Korean ship, killing more than 40 people, I decided to root firmly for Brazil. Anything that embarrasses Kim Jong-il is fine by me.
Matt, Ana and I were dropped off in the vicinity of the stadium and got to walk through the freezing night. At first I was happy to escape the humidity of the Asian summer, but I'm not sure this is much better. Even with a long sleeve shirt, a USA jersey, a hoodie, a coat, long underwear, jeans, gloves, and a hat, it was still chilly. Still, people were out selling things on the street, including face paint, which seemed like a bad idea in the dark.
The lines to get in were longer than they were at the Netherlands vs. Denmark game, which was surprising given that there were 30,000 fewer people. This may have been down to stadium design. Ellis Park is older than Soccer City. There also seemed to be brownouts around the stadium, which was not encouraging.
As you might imagine, the crowd was extremely pro-Brazil. The folks from my guesthouse are mostly Brazilian and they were thoroughly bedecked in jerseys, scarves, and flags. Some even had a giant meter-tall replica of the World Cup with them, which they somehow managed to lose at the game. Don't ask me how that happened. In contrast, the North Korean supporters were limited to a small group, and I highly doubt they were actually North Korean. Curiously, North Korea - sorry Democratic People's Republic of Korea - didn't have a video montage of their starters the way that Brazil did. I wondered if they weren't even allowed that little bit of fun by their government.
The game itself was surprisingly close. Brazil obviously bossed the possession but North Korea had a few opportunities on the break and their striker Jong Tae-Se worked his ass off in Kevin Davies-like fashion. They were well organized and gave everything to keep Brazil out. At half time it was 0-0 much to my surprise. Outside, there were long lines around the guy selling hot coffee. The ice cream vendors were predictably unsuccessful but kept a good sense of humor about it.
The deadlock really was never going to last forever. Seven minutes after the restart, right back Maicon scored what Brazilians will tell you was a shot that beat the keeper at the near post, and what I will tell you was an awful cross that went in. Robinho slid in a perfect pass for Elano to double the lead. However, Ji Yun-nam gave the Dear Leader hope with a great strike near the end, leading to appreciative cheers from the crowd. The upset was not to be though. It was somewhat disappointing as I think a lot of people expected this game to be the blowout of the tournament. North Korea is the lowest-ranked team in the tournament, and Brazil . . . well, they're Brazil. It just goes to show that the smaller teams these days are very good at organizing themselves and there just aren't very many easy games.
After a great deal of effort trying to get a taxi, we went to Monte Casino, which had a number of cool clubs. I lost R150 on Roulette in about 3 minutes. Piss.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Thanks for the enjoyable recount of the North Korea-Brazil game. I missed that one, but caught the highlights later. I did see most of the Switzerland-Spain game and listened to the end on the radio driving to work. I was sure the full five minutes of added time would allow Spain to knot the score.
ReplyDeleteRoulette? Don't they have any chairs you could stand on at that guesthouse?