As many of you will know, the past week was an international
week with no club action. I must admit I prefer to watch club football much
more than the friendly extravaganza that takes place once in a while.
Gordon Igesund enjoyed a decent start to his tenure as
Bafana Bafana coach despite suffering a 1-0 loss against five-time world champions,
Brazil. The side had plenty of new faces
and faces we only got to see for five minutes (I’m looking at you Benni). The game wasn’t beautiful to watch and the Brazilian
fans made it known to everybody watching. Some of the spectators even decided to boo the best player
in the world, Neymar (according to Pele) and chants of “Neymar you are a
popcorn” rang around the stadium as he was coming off near the end of the game.
In an interview
after the match, Neymar had this to say:
"I do not know the exact reason behind the fans' behaviour, but it
might have something to do with the presence of Palmeiras, Corinthians and Sao
Paulo supporters in the crowd. But I repeat, they should be supporting the team
rather than booing players from rival teams."
Neymar endured a tough outing and it did not help that he
was playing in a city that's home to his club team, Santos’ three main rivals. But
whether his claims are true (that some rival teams supporters were giving him a
hard time) or whether Neymar is simply failing to take tough criticism on the chin
and accept that he put in a poor performance, Neymar’s words made me think of
the situation in South Africa.
In the days leading up to Bafana-Brazil game, there were
plenty of discussion and debates on Twitter, the social networking platform, as
to why there seems to be so many Chiefs players and not Orlando Pirates stars
like Andile Jali or former darling other Happy people, Teko Modise. Looking at the situation I asked myself (and
tweeted, of course) why we – as South Africans – are debating and worrying over
such trivial matters like how many players of a certain team happen to be in
the Gordon Igesund first squad, instead of giving - not only the coach, but the
national team as a whole - our full support.
I wondered whether this phenomenon also took place in other
countries like England, Italy or Spain, the current Euro and World Cup
champions. For example, were English people
from the city of Manchester mad at the fact that Manchester City’s Joleon
Lescott was chosen for the Euro 2012 squad instead of Manchester United Rio
Ferdinand? Did these “supporters” bring any logical reasoning to the table when
discussing the pros and cons of bringing in Lescott ahead of Rio or did discussions
disintegrate into a name-calling contest with comments such as “Roy Hodgson is
Man City supporter, look at all those City players” or comments like “This team
is a ManCOWster City replica”? And yes,
I realise that The English squad contained a large number of Manchester United
players, but surely even that would not be too much of an obstacle to stop
small-minded supporters from criticizing anything and everything that they don’t
agree with, with the intensity of
criticism being based on which team the player in question plays for.
One does hope that as supporters of our national soccer team, we begin act as a united front, and cheer without fear or favour (as SoccerZone’s Sylvester Ndaba would say) and that in South Africa we do not ever experience scenes where a certain play is booed mainly because of the club team he belongs to.
International football is difficult enough without having to deal with negative vibes from your own supporters.
Support your team fully and stop acting like a popcorn!
Thomas Monyepao
Do follow me on twitter (Tom_18Yards)
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