The Original Soundtrack

So the World Cup came back to Borden Park on Saturday. It was here in this suburban Detroit park that teams playing their matches at the Silverdome would practice during the 1994 tournament. How well I remember trying to catch Hagi’s attention in the hope that he’d show me his ball skills.

For this year’s World Cup one of the local clubs had arranged for Borden to present a big screen showing of the game in which we summoned up the spirit of 1776 and 1950 to take on the mighty-in-their-own-mind English and their British Bulldog coach with his Italian accent. It was such a melting pot of cultures as traditional African vuvuzela horns, fashioned from cheap plastics in China, were sold at inflated prices in a classic example American exploitation. As I shelled out my greenbacks I truly felt I was part of what the World Cup has come to represent in 2010.

As I laid my Burberry rug out on the grass and settled down to watch the game, the sound of the local kids blowing their vuvuzelas carried me across the miles and I wondered what they would sound like in the cauldron of the stadium in which our boys prepared to do battle. Even as the English scored their first and last goal I was wondering what a vuvuzela would sound like ringing across the plains of the Serengeti. I wondered what a vuvuzela would sound like in the hands of a magnificent Zulu warrior calling his brothers to arms. But as the second half kicked off I was beginning to wonder what a vuvuzela would sound like shoved firmly up the arse of the pain-in-the-butt 'fans' ruining the frickin’ game.




Find me on Facebook.