¡Viva la Roja! and Viva South African pride!

The FIFA World Cup was an extraordinary event in many ways.  Not only did it produce a winner that had never won a World Cup before (from two finalists who had never done it), but it was held in a continent where it had never been held before. 

Many thousands of words have been written about how successful South Africa had been as hosts - and about the surge of national pride and togetherness that it brought.  Most of us are hoping that the same spirit will continue.  For a few days the "What now?" question will reflect the national psyche and then we'll have to address the "What's next" question in all seriousness. If somehow we can put the same energy behind education, the arts, science and especially also job creation and delivery of services as we did behind staging a successful world cup, we could keep those flags of pride flying high.

Meanwhile, I bet never before in the history of mankind has so much Rioja (the red wine that immediately says "Spain" to me) and cerveza been consumed by so many supporters of la Roja (literally "the red ones") in so little time. Or headache tablets on the morning thereafter.  And who would blame them?  As one of my favourite teams from the start, I was supporting them during the later stages of the tournament and was delighted that they won.  Having lived in Spain for a while many years ago as a young girl, there was a personal link - especially since I started watching football on TV in Spain on a small black and white set in my tiny apartment in Calle Capitan Haya in Madrid.  I became a fan of Real Madrid and have

remained it all these years - even though I lived in Switzerland much longer (I did support the local Bernese team there too) and followed some of the teams in the rest of Europe.  Strangely enough, I've never really had a favourite local team here in South Africa.

Congratulations to Germany's Mueller (Golden Boot), Uruguay's Diego Forlan (Golden Ball) and Spain's Casillas (Best Goalkeeper) on the individual awards for the FIFA World Cup. Those were well deserved awards.

It was superb.  Much better than any of us really expected.  People - both locally and overseas - whom I would never have thought of as sports fans, were dragged along by the waves of enthusiasm.   On my little astronomy community web page, the most active discussion in recent weeks was the World Cup. Somehow nobody minded that we were digressing from the subject that we normally talk about.  That somehow sums up the power of something like sport when combined with entertainment and a spirit of friendly togetherness.  I hope for a day when science and cultural events can truly do the same.