Czechia & South Africa play to 1-1 Draw in Atlanta
In what was my second match attended in three days, South Africa and Czechia faced off in Atlanta on Thursday afternoon in front of a much livelier and larger crowd than I had ever anticipated, given the circumstances.
The overall attendance of 67,442 was quite encouraging for a noon kickoff on a weekday featuring South Africa and Czechia, two of the less prominent fanbases that have shown out so far at the tournament.
For all those, myself included, who had worried that the obnoxiously high ticket prices driven up by FIFA would lead to cavernous stadiums with fans being few and far between, this match served as a massive relief.
The venue itself, the relatively new Mercedes-Benz Stadium, was, of course, state-of-the-art. Not only that, but the relatively cheap concessions prices, including a refillable souvenir soda for a mere $4, were allowed to carry over into the World Cup. I had been worried that FIFA would end up forcing the arena to jack up prices, but it was encouraging to see that wasn’t the case.
That being said, a good portion of the crowd felt like what many would have probably anticipated, even feared, when the US was announced as a host of the 2026 World Cup.
Unlike the Norway vs. Iraq match, the fans were much more evenly dispersed throughout the arena rather than seated together in designated fan sections, which, in my opinion, sapped a good amount of the potential atmosphere from the event.
It felt wrong not to have a section of South Africa fans all together singing and dancing throughout the match, as it was one of the sights I had most looked forward to seeing when I first made plans to add this stop to my World Cup journey.
That said, I did at least catch a vuvuzela on my way into the ticket gate, and that bit of 2010 nostalgia is always a plus.
While in my seat, a group of young professional American men behind me loudly spoke about everything from SEC college football to Kevin Costner movies to past sexual experiences…a little too loudly, maybe, for the children that were seated nearby.
Not to sound like an obnoxious gatekeeper, but overhearing conversations of that ilk over the course of the entirety of a fairly important football match for both teams involved did kind of kill the ambiance at times.
Maybe I was being too harsh due to some residual tiredness from the roughly 20 hours or so I’d spent on the road to get to the match in time, but it was undeniable that on a pure vibes basis, the atmosphere paled in comparison to the match in Foxborough.
As I have said in past posts, comparison is often the thief of joy, but I am retrospectively happy that I attended both matches, as the Norway vs. Iraq match certainly felt more like the full experience. But that isn’t to say that Atlanta doesn’t have its own unique level of flavor to add to the experience.
There is, actually, a quite deep connection between Atlanta and Bafana Bafana. One of the most prominent figures in modern South African football history, Kaizer Motaung, played professionally for the Atlanta Chiefs in the 1960s.
He would later found one of the most prominent South African clubs, Kaizer Chiefs, and revolutionize professional league play in his home nation. It’s a fascinating story that is worth diving into in both the works of football writer Simon Kuper and this Atlanta Magazine article.
This connection is perhaps partly the reason why South Africa felt like the better-represented nation, although there were plenty of Czechia chants throughout the runtime of the 1-1 result.
It was a sloppy, back-and-forth affair featuring some…interesting shot selections by both South Africa and Czechia.
It was nice to see that Bafana Bafana would at least not go goalless in their World Cup run after their disastrous start in the tournament’s opening match against Mexico. Teboho Mokoena made up for his rising, off-target shot depicted above by slotting home a well-taken penalty in the 83rd minute to secure the point for his nation and keep its World Cup hopes alive.
Unfortunately, the FIFA fan fest that I had planned on attending for the rest of the day after the match was closed early due to remnants of Tropical Storm Arthur approaching the area.
Faced with that, I decided to head back home to Orlando a day earlier than I had planned to, and thus the East Coast road trip portion of my World Cup journey entered its final stage.