The South African kids have progressed quite far in
qualifying for this year’s Danone Nations Cup World Final. So far five schools
have qualified for the South African National Finals with four more still to
qualify.
I have not posted anything since last years Danone Nations
Cup World Finals that was held in Spain and won by Brazil so I’m sure that most
of the new blog readers do not know anything about the tournament. I know that
I am going to sound like I am promoting the tournament, and I guess that I am,
but I do believe that it is a great tournament and I hope that more schools
will get involved next year. Next years registrations will only open in January
and the entry forms will be found on the SASFA website and at the local SASFA
offices.
The Danone Nations Cup started in the 2000 with 8 pioneering
countries. The countries were France, Italy, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey
and the Ukraine. The tournament was held in France, where it would be held
until the 2010 Danone Nations Cup World Final in South Africa, and was won by
France. The tournament was really in its infancy and most of the Nations did
not take it as seriously as what it should have been taken.
Eventually by 2003 the event had grown to 32 teams and had
become a serious test of skill together will the Danone Motto to “Believe in
your dreams”. This year will also be remembered for South Africa’s first
tournament win. South Africa walked into the final where they found a good Portuguese
team and beat them fare and square. Zinedine Zidane became the ambassador for
the tournament that year and these little South Africans taught him a thing or
two about football.
South Africa has gone on to win the tournament a record
three times which is quite a feat when you see that teams like Spain, Brazil
and Argentina have all won the tournament only once each. Teams like England,
Italy and Germany have not even made it to the finals.
The last time that South Africa won the tournament was in
2009. The World Finals were meant to be held in Brazil in 2009 but due to the
N1H1 virus the tournament was postponed until the next year. The 2009 Brazil
World Final was meant to be the first World Final held outside of France. The
poor South African kids from Bree Primary School thought that they had missed
out on the opportunity of a lifetime but in 2010 Danone organized the 2009 and
2010 World Finals in South Africa. By
default South Africa became the first country outside of France to host the
World Final and the biggest World Final that the tournament had ever held.
By this stage the Danone Nations Cup had progressed to 40
countries so since we were hosting two World Finals we had 80 teams playing in
two tournaments. Our little 2010 team from a very poor area in KZN only managed
to come 22nd but they will always remember the tournament and the
typified the main goal of the tournament and that is to have fun. They had a
blast.
Our 2009 team instead was one of the smallest teams, in
stature, but the biggest in heart and skill. I made friends with a Spanish TV commentator
that said that the South African team was not that bad but there is a Swiss
team that is unstoppable. He compared their players to the likes of Alexander
Frei, Stéphane Chapuisat, Hakan Yakin and other players that I had never heard
of. The Swiss team was also full of giants compared to our players. Our wings
were especially small. In the end my mate had to swallow his words. Our little
boys stood up to these giants and clobbered Switzerland 2-0 in the final that
was held in Orlando Stadium in Soweto. The little South Africans were so
confident and in so much control that they bullied the Swiss kids.
Last year the tournament was held at the famous Bernabeu Stadium
in Madrid, Spain. Our team was overwhelmed by some very powerful teams like
Canada, who even had some fantastic girls playing for them. Even though the
team did not compete for the top positions in the tournament they were
extremely popular, they came out of their shells and used the tournament to
meet as many kids as possible from as many countries as possible.
What is great about this tournament is that there is no prize
money for the schools to win. The point of the tournament is for kids to have
fun and “Believe in your dreams”. I spoke to Zidane in 2010, luckily I speak Italian
because his English is not that great, and he fully believed that kids of that
age must play and have fun. Some of these kids come from poor areas from all
over the world like Haiti, and Senegal or the poorest areas of Brazil,
Argentina and South Africa (our kids didn’t have electricity and some didn’t even
have running water) but for a week they could escape the hardships from their
lives for a week.
A couple of famous players that played in the Danone Nations
Cup:
Rowan Williams
Kamohelo Mokotjo winner of the 2003 Danone Nations Cup World
Finals
Giovani dos Santos
