The sights and sounds of the World Cup. 

The sights of the 2010 World Cup are varied: new plays, new players, new stadiums, new uniforms. The sounds are not. Anyone watching the games on TV is probably all too familiar with South Africa’s most infamous contribution to the world of soccer— the vuvuzela. A friend on Facebook recently described it as “watching a soccer game in a beehive.” I can’t argue with that; but what does not get transmitted through TV is the passion with which these cheap plastic trumpets are blown.

Sometimes as a fan you want to scream and shout for your team, but you’ve already gone hoarse. Or sometimes you want your players to hear your joy, and your opponents to know that you are there in the audience doing everything in your power to shake their concentration. When your lone human voice just isn’t loud enough, you reach for your vuvuzela and send your message. With it, you broadcast your passion. To sit in the stands with ten thousand of them is deafening, but come on, it’s the World Cup! If the passion wasn’t deafening then surely those of us lucky enough to be sitting in the stands would be doing something wrong.