By Jonty Mark and SapaSpanish soccer star Xabi Alonso has called for the vuvuzela to be banned from the 2010 Fifa World Cup.
"Those trumpets? That noise I don't like," he said on Wednesday. "Fifa must ban those things. It is not distracting but it is not nice to have a noise like that."
However, Fifa president Sepp Blatter said on Wednesday the world soccer body had no plans to stop South African fans from blowing vuvuzelas at the Confederations Cup or during the 2010 World Cup finals.
'That is what African and South African football is all about' He was responding to a suggestion from a Dutch journalist at a special media briefing at the Royal Bafokeng Stadium in Rustenberg on Wednesday night that the vuvuzela, which made a "terrible noise", be scrapped.
Blatter just smiled and said he agreed it was a noisy instrument.
"But that is what African and South African football is all about - noise, excitement, dancing, shouting and enjoyment. This is a celebration."
Chief executive of the local organising committee, Danny Jordaan, said with tongue in cheek: "Our fans blow their vuvuzelas before the match. Maybe because they know that they might not be celebrating afterwards."
Blatter admitted that vuvuzelas affected television broadcasts and said Fifa would look into the matter but there were no plans to ban vuvuzelas.
Meanwhile Alonso's team mate, Albert Riera, said he was impressed by the singing of the crowd in Mangaung on Wednesday night, where Spain beat Iraq 1-0.
This article was originally published on page 1 of Cape Argus on June 18, 2009
+ comments + 1 comments
When you are in Rome do as Romans do, I grew up being told that was good English. Visitors in our African culture do not critic those they are visiting especially while they are still visiting. Yes visitors may make their obsavations and they will talk about them on their way back home so that the host will not be offended by some of these comments. Besides, when visiting an African home they will offer you something to eat, you may be alergic to what is offered or the food may look a hog wash. But we eat whatever is offered and suffer consequences later. It is very offensive not to eat whatever is offered. Even great guys like Mandela who has specialised chef, when he gets to Dube Hostel he dines with man eating tripe cooked on a trashcan lead. Look Mandela has never been sick like the rest of us. This does not mean we eat from trash can all the time, but for whatever reason cooking ports are not available. Really the Vuvu are not what we blow, we do this Vuvuzela as new enviromentalist and upholding the green space. What we blow in our cultural jubilation ceremonies are horns from all types of animal. The horns are no joke, I am sure if we can all bring our traditional horns as we can then you will go besek. We are just a happy loud people and we go to sleep in library atmospheres events. Even in our religious groups we do not need a drum, guiter, organ, piano, trumpet or paid music staff, we simply sing. Eveven when we go to the club we sing, when we work at white people houses you can hear our mothers singing. If you go to prison you can hear inmates singing, get into our trains and buses wesing all the way.
When we come to Italy we will have a good time and you will not hear whatever we may gossip about later. We even go behind the mountain if we want to gossip and it takes a good while to get to a good mountain to gossip.
Shapa Egypt Shapa Mantarian