City Of Goals

If Cape Town is the laid back sophisticate, beautiful to look at but not always easy to connect with, then Joburg is the brash energetic one, a bit rough around the edges, but big on personality and brimming with sex appeal.

Joburg is a strange city. Aesthetically it’s a disaster. Mine dumps instead of mountains, a couple of manky streams running through it, and sprawling suburbs with about as much character as a FIFA official explaining the World Cup ticketing system. Joburg is the largest city in the world not situated on a river, lake or coastline. This is a gold rush town. That’s the only reason it exists.

A river or coastline would have been quite handy to transport the gold but Joburg had to make do with building roads…..a lot of them. Nobody likes an empty road, so the next step was to build houses on those roads…..a lot of them. Joburg is only 124 years old, a teenager in city terms. A teenager raised on a diet of slap chips and Coke if the sprawl is anything to go by.

When your looks are that bad you have no choice but to rely on your personality. For a city, that means your people. Joburg is the only city I know whose charm emanates purely from its citizens. To make a place like Joburg seem charming they must be pretty special people.

They are. This is a place where your background and your school matter less than what you have to say around the braai. It’s a place where people look you in the eye when they do business, no hard feelings, no regrets. But it’s also a place where you can meet someone for the first time on a Thursday and be lifelong friends by Saturday.

Joburgers are sharp, they’re resourceful, they’re funny and they’re warm….and they’ve built the most magnificent stadium I’ve ever seen.

Primedia Broadcasting staff

On Monday I was lucky enough to visit Soccer City along with the rest of my colleagues at Primedia Broadcasting. Soccer City is the site of 8 games including the final, the opening game and a couple of snorters like Brazil vs Ivory Coast and Germany vs Ghana.

Inside the dressing rooms

Soccer City is so Joburg! Distinctly rough around the edges. Not just the neighbourhood in which it sits but also the approaches, the concourse and the car parks, all of which are some way off the finished article. But Soccer City is a true Joburger. If you can get past the jagged façade and into the heart you’ll be blown away.

The scale of this stadium is magnificent. 94 000 seats within spitting distance of the action, all housed inside an African Pot, a calabash set in a ‘pit of fire’ (the surrounding perimeter gate). Standing in the centre of the pitch what strikes you most is the way the sound is contained within the pot and amplified. Bafana Bafana defender Matthew Booth knew what he was talking about when he said he didn’t envy any team taking on 90 000 vuvuzelas at Soccer City.

John Robbie, David O' Sullivan and Aki Anastasiou

John Robbie, our morning show host on Talk Radio 702 and rugby pundit, told me that the Soccer City pitch has been adapted to accommodate rugby. We all know that the Springboks are virtually unbeatable at Ellis Park with 60 000 heaving, pulsing Joburgers roaring them on. God help the All Blacks when they have 94 000 Springbok supporters baying in the cauldron of the African Pot.

But that’s for another time. For now, God help the Mexicans when they enter the calabash at 4pm on Fri 11^th June. Welcome to Joburg, amigos.

Watch the video: The only Irishman likely to score a goal in 2010 at the World Cup Final venue