World Cup South Africa: 50 days away!

The big brains of SB Nation had a World Cup planning confab yesterday – and man did it get my little soccer shorts jumping.

I’ll be blogging from South Africa for Daily Soccer Fix and writing for SI.com.  We’ll tie the blog content into other World Cup content at SBNation.com. SB Nation will also have a “fan on the ground” blogger (whose name I can’t reveal for security and proprietary reasons … and because I can’t remember the fellow’s last name.)

During the meeting we brainstormed for the best ways to throw our arms around the World Cup experience. I tried to impart upon them the wonderful wealth of content in and around a World Cup. (This will be the fifth I’ve covered as a card-carrying, hat-wearing, grammar rule-busting journalist.)

The moment you step off a plane or train in a host country, the nervous energy, excitement and embrace of a nation is palpable. It’s a living, breathing United Colors of Benetton with fans from around the globe who have waited four years for the moment.

Content-wise, stories will pour out of the newspapers in England, Spain, Brazil and all points in between, all ripe for discussion. (How’s your Portuguese?)  There will be content to produce and play off in terms of managers, players, fans, scams, tickets, hotels, training sessions, weather, altitude, injuries, etc.  There’s a lot of “etc.”  Everything there will be dissected like your favorite CSI ep. And there will be security issues to hash out – whether its England fans brawling at the local pubs or larger, far scarier and ominous threats.

I would say it’s a 30-day sleep-deprived Adrenalin rush … but it’s really longer. Teams will get into camps early May; the U.S. reports on May 15. The analyzing, prognosticating and pontificating all starts there.

For just a wee little appetizer of the World Cup flava, here’s a blog entry I wrote in 2006 from Germany, one that helps capture just a little of the World Cup spirit:

Click through to read the blog entry, dateline Hamburg, Germany:

HAMBURG, Germany - For absorbing the World Cup experience, Germany’s stadiums are the place to be, of course. 

Then again, the train station isn’t a bad substitute.

European train stations are teeming places anyway, laden with the spring-loaded energy of nervous and excited travelers, mixed with the day-to-day bustle of regular folks off to work. Then, stir in a little passion, nationalism, anxiety (and beer), and the station's pulse absolutely races.

On game days, a city's hauptbahnhof (central train station) is a roiling madhouse of spirit. And noise. And color. And flags. And painted faces. And anxiety about results.

Right away, from the first step off a train there is a mix of eagerness and nervousness about finding the stadium. (It’s usually remarkably easy; you just follow everyone else.)

And then there's the awesome presence of substantially armed and substantially intimidating polizei.  I don’t know about anyone else, but automatic weapons deployed at regular intervals is not something I see every day.

If there's going to be trouble, chances are it will be at the train station, where opposing fans mingle. So police depend on this daunting display as a strategic deterrence.

Even beyond match day, the hurly-burly of a train station makes for a fascinating place.  It's certainly a sector of questionable hygiene. Bathrooms?  Insert your coins and roll the dice.
Oh, and beware the slick pickpockets.

And it can be a place where revelry goes to die. At 5 a.m. in Kaiserslautern after the U.S.-Italy match, bedraggled fans with grimy clothes and deteriorating body paint, all tuckered or drunk, awaited the morning trains.

They slept on filthy floors or wandered aimlessly. A mad scene it was, looking like something between a Halloween party gone bad and a minor emergency triage area.

That’s a World Cup in microcosm. We are 50 days out. Avoid the Christmas rush and start enjoying now.