After watching the 2010 World Cup Final, I drove to Mary Brown's to pick up some dinner. As I turned off highway 401 and onto Erin Mills Parkway, I fell in rank behind a black coupe sporting a Spanish flag. With its plastic mast hooked between the window and the car frame, the small flag bent in the wind as the car sped down the street ahead of me. Spain won the World Cup hours before in Johannesburg, when they defeated the Netherlands 1-0 in extra time, to lift the World Cup trophy. Numerous images of Spanish victory included various Spanish players sporting scarves of their affiliation with their Spanish league clubs, and pictures of viewers in Madrid going bananas.
For now, however, I am watching this flag flap in the wind on top of the black car speed up the hill. Suddenly, the flag snaps and falls towards the wheels of my car! I drive over the flag so its colours pass under the frame instead of under my tires. There were no cars behind me, but all the same I remember not to stop otherwise I may cause an accident. Finally, with the crisis averted I check my rear view mirror, but the flag is gone much like the former owner of the Spanish car flag, who sped off into the distance.
Everyone here is a Canadian again, and while the party continues in pockets across our country, the feeling of belonging is a distant memory. In another four years, the media will remind us of this year's party and why the next party will be "the most important sporting event ever". People will purchase flags and jerseys, magazines and face paint, and even take up an interest in a sport my friend Kurtis regards as "watching grass grow". FIFA President Sepp Blatter called the World Cup "a meeting for all the world's countries to come together to celebrate and compete in soccer under the banner of peace". Much like car flags and World Cup magazines, this World Cup was also for sale.
South Africans paid for the ten stadiums dotting the southern African landscape. Multimillion dollar, metal eyesores that will each host a handful of soccer games over the next year. Shacks and rubble hid in the shadows of these white elephants, as FIFA leaves these structures with their wide profit margins, TV ratings, and millions of supporters. Continental rotation, which stamps Sepp Blatter's image on world soccer, will afford each continent an opportunity to host the World Cup at least once over the next 30 years. In other words, countries that don't have enough money to support their countrymen and their families must bid to host the World Cup (see South Africa 2010, and Brazil 2014). Unfortunately, no one will remember this either because the world's attention will be on the next World Cup.
I watched a CBC video on the history of the vuvuzela a couple weeks ago. I listened to the sound of wasps throughout the five minute documentary. I remembered one shot of kids playing on a trampoline someone brought into the neighbourhood as a couple of older gentlemen made that annoying sound. I did not remember that scene because of the men, the plastic horns, the kids, or the trampoline, I remembered that scene because of the ruined buildings and desolate housing behind them.
What I learned about this World Cup is not only can you put a price on a game, but you can put a price on national pride. FIFA bought the pride of South Africa, when they put the show ahead of its people, and all of us bought into the hype of another World Cup. Now that we turned off the cameras, took back the vuvuzelas, and folded up the trampoline, what will remain?
Congratulations FIFA on a job well done.
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