Bafana Bafana put on a dismal peformance last night at Loftus Versveld, much to the dismay of fans, Facebook-ers and Tweeter-ers.
Pretoria weather on 16 June started on a freezing -1 and that pehaps gave an indication that team South Africa would give a freezing peformance in The City of Tshwane.
What became clear last night was that Bafana Bafana need to do something rather drastic in order for it to make it out of the group matches. Teko Modise, Sphiwe Tshabalala and Aaron Mokoena gave their worst peformance of all time. Modise fell everytime he had a ball on his court, Sphiwe would not pass the ball because he still thinks he can score like he did during the historic opening game against Mexico on 11 June. I don't know what Mokoena is still doing in the team.
Uruguay's Diego Forlan scored a goal before half time putting pressure on our boys. After half-time, South Africa had her fingers crossed that at least we can score a goal and peherps even score a second one. With just less than 30 minutes to the final whistle, something rather devastating happened. Uruguay's Alvaro Pereira was about to score when Khune tried to grab the ball from his legs. Khune "scored" a red card and the "racist" referee awarded Pereira a penalty. The guy was offside and didn't deserve a penalty and our Khune didn't deserve that "racist" red card.
Facebook immediately started buzzing with fans saying the "racist referee should be taught a kasi lesson". Some even posted that "the referee must start packing because he shall not walk on SA soil". Some of my Facebook buddies called him names. Even Walter Mokoena and his commentators in the studio said it was punishment enough for team SA that Uruguay was awarded a penalty and therefore, it was unnecessary for him to banish Khune from the World Cup.
A heartbroken Khune left the ground, coach Carlos Alberto Pereira sacrificed Steven Pienaar so he could put in Moneeb Josephs on Khune's shoes. Khune's shoes proved to be too big for Josephs to put on as Alvaro Pereira scored the penalty, silencing all staunch and part-time Bafana Bafana supporters. Even some of the fans at the stadium started leaving in droves.
At just one minute left for the final whistle, Forlon scored another goal putting final devastation on all fans and everybody else who is pro-Bafana Bafana. As the game ended, the score was 3 Uruguay 0 South Africa.
In order for team SA to make it out of the group matches, we need to hope that France will wallop Mexico today or at least they draw and we need to win our next game by probably 2-0, which, if Bafana Bafana continue on their current pace, will not happen. At the gym weight floor and showers this morning, everybody was talking last night's game and saying we must hope that France and Mexico draw. I said to them: We cannot rely on other teams to save us and work for us. If we are to make it out of group matches, we need to it ourselves. This puts us in a situation we were in last year during the Confederations Cup when we had to wait to hear whether the team we have drawn with was moered. It indeed was moered and we made it to the quarter finals but Brazil gave us a whipping, shuttering us from reaching the semis.
Newspapers headlines this morning are empathsising with fans. The Times says "Heartbreak", the Pretoria News says "Floods of tears", the Sowetan says "Agony", Ther Citizen says "Bafana Bullseye", hinting at that Loftus is home to Blue Bulls and Bafana have a Blue eye this morning.
Last night our boys didn't look like they were playing in a World Cup, let alone being the host country. Bafana Bafana got punished three times. 1. They didn't mark the dangerous Forlan and they got punished for it. 2. They didn't attack and they got punishment as well hence they didn't score any goal. 3.The team was very weak in all spheres and that gave Uruguay a field night on the pitch hence they scored three goals.
After the final whistle, a Facebook buddy of mine posted something which peherps sums everything up: "relax, its only a game,hehehe! S.Az stil hosting the W.C thou...its stil a gud tourist attraction n al! @ lst the players who wer part of the squad cn add W.C participation in their resumés! #lookingonthebrightside".