adminChristopher Mlalazi Lighterside
ONCE again, the World Cup has roared into life, taking our hearts away with it.
Now the Mount Kilimanjaro question on everyone’s lips is, or to call it by a Brazilian name, the Pico Da Neblina mountain question, which country will take the cup home with them.
Well, no doubt the teams which receive the most drubbing will also get our attention as well, especially those that are going to be beaten with margins above five nil, as we will be wondering how they got there in the first place instead of us going.
I have no idea when the World Cup started, or who started it, and why it was started, and I don’t even want to check it lest it distracts me from my enjoyment of the golden game, but I know what I want, and that is to watch as many games as I can, and if I am to miss some, not to miss the stages from the quarter-finals.
But why is this trophy called a cup? I also have no idea, but the creative person inside me is asking, why not call it the World Mug?
I thought a mug holds more than a cup, and come to think of it, a pot can hold even more than both a cup and a mug put together, and even calling the World Cup a World Pot would even hold more meaning to the world of sport.
Yes, the World Pot, symbolising fertility, abundance, and togetherness. How many of us in our childhood sat around big pots of food cooking on a fire in the villages, knowing that in a little while our stomachs would be full of food, and we will be sitting back in bliss, and maybe listening to a story, as we waited to go to bed?
Now the cup, it doesn’t bring confidence, or symbolise abundance with its tininess, and hence does not sound good for a world trophy for the most excelling national soccer team in this wide world.
I don’t know why Fifa does not think about this. Maybe I should send them a WhatsApp, maybe they can change the name before the finals, and when the final whistle blows, we see some celebrating soccer players proudly holding high into the air a big golden pot complete with a lid and a long handle.
On the cup, yes we like drinking tea, but one cannot feed on it. And so too, one cannot cook from a cup, unless maybe it was creative cooking, usually practised by bachelors who are lodgers just like my friend dash dash dash . . . And this reminds me of the time when I once played in a World Cup.
I was about six or seven years old then, and it was in a playground somewhere on a street in the townships. I forgot which township it was, but we had no ref, no uniforms, and the goal posts were half bricks. I have also forgotten which team won, but I remember one team ended up chasing the other with stones over a disputed goal.
You see, when scoring between the half bricks, the ball had to go on the ground for it to be considered a score as there were no cross bars to allow for high balls, but this one somehow had not been clear if it had rolled or it was high, and that was why the chasing.
But these street world cups were the most exciting for us during the World Cup period, as we would imagine ourselves as Peles or Ronaldos.
We even closely imitated the styles of our favourite World Cup players, how they dribbled or kicked the ball. We even nicknamed our teammates with the names of these World Cup players, and if we were not nicknamed ourselves by others, we nicknamed ourselves, going like — “mina ngingu Maradona.”
And then after our world cup street games, we would go home covered in dust, and usually we would have left home in the morning after breakfast, to come back at sunset, having done with no lunch. That is how strong we were. I think we were even stronger than the World Cup players we would be watching later in the evening, now again hunting for more playing styles to display the following day kumphepha.
And so, don’t be surprised when you hear at the end of the tournament that it is now called the World Pot.
Online Reporter