There has been an influx of fans from participating countries that have arrived in South Africa to cheer on the youngsters competing in the Danone Nations Cup World Final currently underway at the University of Pretoria Sports Complex.
Uruguay brought a group of supporters equivalent to two full soccer teams who arrived at the Sports Complex armed with vuvuzela's: "We saw from the World Cup that blowing Vuvuzela's is the South African way of celebrating football so we decided to celebrate in the same way," said one of the supporters who showed off her colourful instrument that she decorated herself. They then proceeded to sing and cheer on the team.
Edward Bermuyez, coach of the u/12 Uruguay team, was glowing with pride. “I am very happy with the way our team performed yesterday. We are already in the top 16, and I am sure our loyal supporters contributed to that,” he laughs.
The fun has not been restricted to the pitch though. Various activities are keeping the soccer stars of tomorrow busy while they had some time off from the pitch. The teams have learnt to paint clay pots in the Zulu tradition (the Chinese team decided to stretch this further and proceeded to paint each other as well), learned the diski dance, and even the world cup dance, the waka waka - with South Africa’s own imitation Shakira.
There have been lot of laughs as kids from the 45 countries learned to do the well-known South African gum boot dance too - some faring better than others.
Brazil, Chile, Indonesia, Czech republic, Japan, Spain, Uruguay and Argentina emerged top of their groups in the 2010 Danone Nations after play yesterday.
The Danone Nations Cup is not restricted to boys and some of the countries have girls participating. One such country is Canada: "There are two of us in our team," said one of the Under 12 girls. "I am so happy that I was chosen to come to South Africa. Football is my passion and I would like to go far in the sport one day and this tournament is fantastic for me. What I enjoy is seeing different countries way of play. I believe that Canada is strong in shooting and goalkeeping but other teams are stronger than us in their dribbling techniques," said the mature and confident 12 year old.
The temperature in Tshwane will be hot today and the action is stepping up as the round robin phase of the competition comes to an end and teams go into the knockout phase.
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