World Cup Diary – Day 12

I managed to sleep quite well on the coach, couple of sleeping tablets helped and it was still quite comfy despite being the economy bus option.
We pulled into Belo Horizonte at 7:30am and got a taxi to our hotel hoping for a chance of early check-in. No such luck, the Argies were in town and our hotel was fully booked from the previous night.
With no other option we freshened up in the hotel lobby toilets and sat down for a bit of breakfast at fair few espressos.
3 of us headed to the ground at about 10am, Liam unfortunately missed this one as he couldn’t get a ticket in time and after reports of trouble in the main square the previous night and tear gas used, he didn’t fancy approaching too many Argentinos for spare tickets.
A taxi to the ground, the streets lined with blue and white, some even made the trip by car from Argentina, The Iran fans we’re heavily outnumbered. We were a little nervous about heading to the game being English and The Falklands dramas and what what not but we shouldnt have worried, there was only a little hostility in the ground between the Brazilians and Argentinos but we kept our heads down in neutral colours and were fine.

The match was a real cracker and the atmosphere was incredible,the Iranians gave it a real go, their support bolstered by the home nations crowd cheering them on and it needed a bit of magic from Lionel Messi to decide the game late on with a wonder strike. I felt privileged to be able to say I’ve seen him play at a World Cup in his prime.
He left the stadium buoyant after witnessing a cracking spectacle and managed to find a bar near the ground with all you can eat Buffet while we waited for the crowds to die down we filled our plates and enjoyed the Germany game.

After a few Caiprihinias, we headed back to the hotel in a private taxi the bar had called for us. Now Brazil has its fair share of crazy taxi drivers , I’d experienced many so far whilst being out here but this guy really took the crown. He knocked him down on his price and so he decided to get us back to our hotel as fast as possible with some of the most insane driving I’d ever seen, his car had no belts in the back and I definitely thought I was gonna die at least twice as he swerved in out of cars and buses at 120km/h on a dual carriage way and nearly skidded off on a on ramp.

Thankfully we made it home in one piece and to much overdue shower and a early night… Or so I thought until my mate Kai had landed in Belo Horizonte, one thing led to another and that explains to why my blog is so behind. A great day though and once of the best of the trip.

World Cup Diary – Day 10

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.