The Big Match: Yemen vs. India!
Trip Start
Oct 13, 2005
1
21
22
Trip End
Dec 22, 2006
Sana'a,
Yemen
Friday, November 17, 2006
The streets too have at last quietened down - in addition to the traditional giving of new clothes, all the children seemed to receive firecrackers and toy guns for Eid, and for a good fortnight thereafter the streets were a cacophony of bangs and screams at all hours of the day and night
Game 1
. In a country where 60 million guns float like excreta among a population of a mere 20 million people, I don't know whether it's a worry that children are given pretend guns to play with, or a relief that they're seemingly content with mere toy replicas! Anyway, the shackles of the daily routine were finally broken the other day when a big group of us went to watch THE big football match: Yemen vs. India (Asian Games Qualifying Group match)!! A football-mad German guy here had gotten wind of the fixture a couple of weeks back and word had gradually spread through the school. As the match-day approached I was getting rather excited by the novelty of the event and decided to buy a Yemen football shirt to wear to the match, managing to pick one up for the token sum of $6. Pretty soon, my fellow students had followed suit and come the big day, a good 20 of us headed out to the national stadium, more than half of us donning Yemen shirts!
As we strolled up to the gates the security must have taken one look at us (big group of white folk dressed in Yemen football shirts) and decided we didn't belong among the everyday folk sitting on the roman amphitheatre-like bare concrete steps that made up the vast majority of the stadium. Instead we were ushered into the VIP stand
Game 2
. There we took our (leather) seats among the scant dignitaries of the day's match and watched on in the shade as the rest of the stadium baked in the afternoon sun. It was just so typical of the treatment Westerners receive out here, and as great as it is sometimes to be ushered to the front of a long queue or sent to the VIP stand at a football game, it's also somewhat humbling and embarrassing to receive such treatment, because one has done nothing to deserve it except happen to have white skin. Well anyway, the cricket pavilion-like stand offered us a great view of proceedings and we were able to cheer on heartily the players as they entered the pitch from either side of us. For the most part we were cheering on Yemen, but Hema cheered on her ancestral India with vigour. As for the match itself... India and Yemen are ranked 143 and 144 respectively in the FIFA rankings, so that should give you a clue as to the quality of football on display. It bore all the hallmarks of a potentially terrible game - two low-ranked teams playing at altitude in a match that meant nothing because both teams had already failed to qualify from their group (Japan and Saudi Arabia finishing well above them).
The first half was a horror show with ample gilt-edged chances missed and long-ball-up-top-to-nobody the prevailing tactics on display - Graham Taylor would have been proud
Gool!
! I would say it was like watching a Sunday morning match in a park league back home, but that would do a disservice to the swathes of out-of-shape 20-somethings sweating off their hangovers every Sunday morning in parks all across England! 0-0 at half time then! Perhaps the match would have been more enjoyable to watch had I been able to vent my frustration with some good old English chanting - unfortunately, this being Yemen and thus somewhat conservative, I hadn't had the bottle prior to the game to ask my teacher for the Arabic translations to: "the referee's a wanker" or "you fat bastard", and the irony underlying: "it's just like watching Brazil" and "she fell over" seemed sadly lost on the Yemeni crowd! Thankfully the second half was a marked improvement (though all things are relative) and, after going a goal down courtesy of a terrible defensive error, Yemen came from behind to win 2-1. It was quite probably the worst football match I've ever been to but certainly the most memorable, and that's all that matters in the end. Perhaps one of the highlights of the experience for me was looking up at the scoreboard each time a goal was scored and seeing emblazoned in neon splendour "GOOL" - most amusing!
