Match day. I feel the worse I have all trip, strong partying last night and probably the highest consumption to date of Caipiroskais’s is to blame, well at least I’m getting my 5 a day.
We headed down to the ground quite early, the ground by all accounts is awful to get to, it took 40 minutes by metro and once we arrived there was swarms of fans in a congested narrow areas, everywhere you looked people we needing tickets. We made are way through the crowds and found a mini fan park to watch the Columbia/Ivory Coast game, after a fair few Braham’s I’d finally felt normal again and excitement was reaching fever pitch.
The walk up to the ground was more like a shuffle thanks to the poor access to the newly built, half finished stadium and we finally arrived at the ground a hour before kick off, the stadium , despite being vast and visually impressive was actually quite embarrassing once you scratch the surface, the 2 stands behind the goal looked more like scaffolding or a temporarily stand you’d see at a cricket ground, too few toilets, the concourse’s we’re shaped with polystyrene to hide the no doubt bare concrete structure and no doubt building site behind it. At least getting a beer was easy thanks the dozens of vendors scattered around.
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The atmosphere in the game was brilliant again and like in Manaus standing room only in the England section behind the goal, we did everything we could to get behind the team but the same spark and ability to create goal scorers chances that was a positive from the Italy game seemed to dessert us in this one and of course it was in the script for Luis Suarez to score and more a less send us home.
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Mass despair amongst the England Fans in my section, we did seem to play well in spells of the game but it wasn’t enough compared to a World Class striker who may get 3 chances all game but still score two of them.
Before our goal both Rooney and Sturridge had clear cut opportunities that we really need to be taking at this level and then the outcome may have been very different.
I think a major factor is the players are playing with fear, from the press, from the nation. They fear the potential ridicule that Beckham and Rooney have received coming home from tournaments in recent years. Where as nation’s like Costa Rica who as I’m writing this have just beaten 4 times world champions Italy to seal our fate play with no fear , with players like Bryan Ruiz a failed career at Fulham behind has scored the goal to take his modest nation to the last 16 compared to our lot of premier league winners and champions league level players.
As reality set in it dawned on me that it might be quite hostile outside the ground so I made sure I left the ground with renown 2 Sheffield United lads I had met in Manaus, no ones going to mess with The Blades I thought, though someone would be brave enough to pick pocket one of their wallets and phones in the crush to get back to the station.
Though other than that there was no trouble that I came across or saw and the journey back to hotels wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. The Uruguayans were actually quite respectful in their victory and there was no goading of us like the Italiazilans did in Manaus.
Once back in town I enjoyed a fair few drinks in reasonable spirits with the Sheffield lads and eventually had a relatively early night turning in at 1am.
The Good Of The Game 