Soccer - still feeling the gees!

720 minutes - that's how much live soccer I have watched since the World Cup began! 

That's not counting the extra time or the travelling to and from stadiums, or to another city. And then I have also watched the games on television and spent time doing "soccer" shopping for the kids - supporters' caps, flags and T-shirts. Then there has been the poster up on my son's wall to record the results and speculate about the progress. Plus all the talking about the games and the behaviour on and off the pitch...There's also the visitors who have popped up from Australia, the US and Sweden, who we are entertaining. 

I would never have believed that it could be so consuming. It has been refreshing, though to see how other sports have made way for soccer in the media. So many people play the game but it has always been relegated to the news after rugby or cricket. 

There are already positive ripples in the tourism industry. I read in news that we normally have about 300 visitors from Mexico in a normal year but over this period we have around 15 000! If a fraction of them come back to visit we would have thousands more than usual. Hopefully that applies to all the other soccer tourists here at the moment and we will reap the benefits of a boost to the economy. Some restaurants are complaining that they are not as busy as usual, or as they expected to be, during this period. I wonder if locals are staying away from the hot-spots, like the Waterfront in Cape Town, as they fear that it will be too busy.

So now we are gearing up for the quarter and semi-finals in the next week. all of them are promising to be interesting, especially with the upsets that have happened so far: Italy and France have already made the journey home. I am starting to feel like a child when the holiday has been so good and you don't want it to end and go back to school. I hope we can hold on to the gees just a little bit longer!