Hi. This is my first time so please be gentle. I wanted to write my inaugural column about something important. Something we can all relate to. Something that affects us all on a deep and meaningful level.
Then I thought— it’s the World Cup! Apologies to all you footballphobes and those who insist on calling it soccer, but as Bill Shankly once said: “Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it is much more important than that.”
I am as concerned as the next British male about my national team’s lacklustre start against the USA, but I am not going to bang on about the on pitch action. Those masters of stating the bleeding obvious, the professional commentators, are far more adept than I and, anyway, I thought it best to try not to have an attack of foot in mouth on my first outing for Popsop.
Something off pitch has caught my eye: the disparate designs of the stadia. They are as varied as the landscape of South Africa, geologically and politically, as if attempting to distil the essence of a country in architecture.
The Nelson Mandela stadium in Port Elizabeth is crowned with a beautiful petal-like structure. High tech and functional, it is curvaceously appealing. There is something organic and feminine about it, at the same time as being quite hard edged.
Photograph: handout/AFP/Getty Images
South Africa’s biggest stadium, Soccer City in Soweto, is a gorgeous gigantic melting pot, which is a neat analogy for the melding of divergent cultures in the post Apartheid nation.
Alexander Joe/AFP/Getty Images
The jewel in the crown is Cape Town’s Green Point stadium with its Teflon-coated, woven fibreglass filigree skin that glows with different colours at different times of day. It is colourful, changeable, airy, elegant, vast and quite beautiful. Much like the country itself.
Warren Little/Getty Images
The Peter Mokaba stadium in Polokwane is a delight. The roof is held up by a concrete and metal structure that emulates a local tree, the boabab, which has an unmistakable shape. What I love about the architectural treatment is that it is meaningful to the indigenous population and pleasing to the eye of the ignorant. It encapsulates something of the local landscape without being too overt. Or, indeed, patronising.
Stephane De Sakutin/AFP/Getty Images
Contrast this with the zebra print nightmare of the Mbombela stadium in Nelspruit, where the black and white seats all but glow in the African sun. The roof is held up by steel towers designed to be symbolic of giraffe necks. Fair enough, symbolism works very well in other stadia, but there is nothing subtle about the monochrome eyesore of the seating.
Photograph: Handout/AFP/Getty Images
One howler isn’t a bad result. Let’s hope the same can be said of England goalkeeper Robert Green by the end of the tournament.
Chris Hart, Creative Director, Blue Marlin, Bath