FC Barcelona vs Mamelodi Sundowns

I must apologize to some of you because I know that you will be jealous. Last week we went to a soccer game at Loftus Versveld, in Pretoria. FC Barcelona vs. Mamelodi Sundowns. That’s right….FC Barcelona. We saw Ronaldhino play. I saw Ronaldhino play against the leading South African premier team, the Sundowns. Bardelona won 2-1 and it was a close game. “Dhino” was triple teamed every time he got the ball and still had two nasty assists. His second assist to give Barcelona the lead was amazing. He had his back turned to the goal when he received the pass. He one touched the ball off his left foot without looking to a teammate who was behind him. That guy received the pass perfectly in stride and scored off 1 dribble. When “Dhino” left the game with 5 min left, he received a standing ovation from a crowd of 60,000. By the way tickets only cost 50 rand…divide that by seven…That’s right just over $7.
The experience itself was one only to be found in Africa. On the way to the stadium we were walking through a mass of thousands of people. We were in a group of 15. In our group were 10 white guys, 1 white girl, 2 black South African girls and 2 black South African guys. Some guy tried to pick pocket the ticket from one of the black girls with us. She felt him take her ticket out of her pocked and starting yelling at him. Once we figured out what just happened all 10 of our guys surrounded this guy and got in his face. Needless to say he started sweating. I guess he did not know that black girl was with all these big white guys. I got in his face and saw that he was hiding her ticket in his armpit. So we took the ticket from him and gave it back to the girl.
We continued to walk among the throng of people towards the stadium and right when we were about to walk in a guy tried to pick pocket Dietch, a guy on our CCP team. Dietch had his hands in his pockets when this guy bumped into him and reached his hand into Dietch’s pocket. So Dietch had his hand in his own pocket when this other guy reached his hand into his pocket as well. So Dietch pushed the guy down and kept walking.
Once in the stadium it was madness. Thousands and thousands singing songs in Zulu and blowing these plastic horns. The noise from the horns made it sound like we were sitting in a beehive.