UK vs. Algeria

I flew to Cape Town on a whim. I had watched the opening week of games while in Zanzibar, and decided that if a plane ticket didn't cost too much, I was going to South Africa.

It didn't, so I did.

My first day in South Africa, the England/Algeria game was being held in Cape Town. The U.S. played Slovenia the same day in Johannesburg, so I walked down to Long Street, scalped a ticket to the England match and sat at a pub to watch Germany strangely lose to Slovakia, with the U.S. game coming on afterward. For those of you who watched the Slovenia game, you know how exciting and heart breaking it was. The atmosphere in the pub was mostly embarrassment for the first half, with all the English fans making fun of us for losing to fucking Slovenia. But the second half was exhilarating. The comeback the team made had strangers kissing, hugging and lifting each other on to tables to scream at the TV and each other.

Incredible fun; and we were all a bit drunk.

The third goal came at a time of perfect emotional culmination - and then was a mind-shattering disappointment when it was disallowed. I crawled under a table and sat there with my head in my hands for the better part of a minute after it happened.

With the emotional charge of that experience still lingering in synapse.s, I walked to Green Point Stadium (which is beautiful) that night hoping for more excitement. But the first World Cup match of my life was dreadful. A listless, poorly played 0-0 draw that neither the English nor the Algerians should have had any pride in. And the English fans certainly didn't. They booed their team off the field and even went into the locker room to tell them they were shit. Or at least to let David Beckham know.

I was disappointed with the game, and by the second half was starting to feel an early hangover developing from the afternoon of drinking. I almost fell asleep at one point - and my seat wasn't that bad.

It was an awful game, almost every one that I saw after it was better than the last.

Except one.