Day One: 11/6/2010

The surprise is: France fail to shine!

What do you think about vuvuzelas? I want one, but being an Englishwoman in Scotland, I'd not get one with an England flag on it. The vuvuzelas sound awesome the first time you hear them. After a while, however, your brain is filled with the sound and you start to get a headache. According to Wikipedia, they can get up to 127 decibels! A few vuvuzela stats:

50,000 were shipped to the UK before the World Cup. On the day it was announced that South Africa would host the World Cup, 20,000 were sold in the country. They are incredibly popular, multicoloured things that even children find easy to play, and sound like a horde of angry bees. However, they have been part of South African tradition for ages. We will certainly be hearing more of these in the future – both at football matches, and in the news.

Back to the game. First, South Africa versus Mexico. It seemed like a relatively boring game, but at least goals were scored! Four yellow cards were given out, two per team. Mexico used all three of their substitutes, while South Africa only used two.

South African goalscorer Siphiwe TSHABALALA (yes, I did copy-and-paste his name) is 25 years old, and plays for the Kaizer Chiefs! Yep, the band really is named after a South African football team. I didn't know that either. He was also named man of the match.
Mexican goalscorer Rafael MARQUEZ is slightly older, at 31, and plays in Spain for Barcelona, so you know he's good. Unfortunately, one good player does not a good team make, which is why Mexico's international reputation needs a bit of work.

In the second game, France and Uruguay were disappointing – especially France, who you'd expect to do well. They came to a 0-0 draw. All-in-all, seven yellow cards were given out, one of which was a second yellow that got a Uruguayan sent off.

The sent-off Uruguayan is Nicolas LODEIRO, who's only 21 years old! He plays for Ajax in the Netherlands, and has only played five games for Uruguay. It looks like that won't be increasing any time in the future, since he received his second yellow.
There was an Asian flavour to the refereeing in this match, with Japanese referee NISHIMURA Yuichi. He is 38, and the Fifa website lists his hobbies as 'golf'. He's into his seventh year of refereeing. His first assistant is also Japanese, and the other is South Korean.

Goals per game: Mean – 1, Median – 1, Mode – 0,2, Range - 2
Cards per game: Mean – 5.5, Median – 5.5, Mode – 4,7, Range - 3

Tomorrow: Three games! Group B kicks off, along with the first half of group C.