Brief History of the Danone Nations Cup South Africa

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 22^nd 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