If you want European atmosphere, hit the bars (Feature)

By Michael Logan Jun 15, 2010, 19:10 GMT

Cape Town - The World Cup is only five days old, but already fans and players from outside South Africa are raising their voices in a chorus of disapproval about the atmosphere in stadia.

Predictably, most of the criticism centres around the drone of the vuvuzelas, which travelling supporters say kill the ebb and flow of crowd noise that gives a stadium its unique character.

Some well-travelled football buffs claim they can recognize a ground only by listening to its chants, cheers and groans. But every stadium in South Africa sounds the same.

From Green Point in Cape Town to Soccer City in Johannesburg, floundering attempts to sing are drowned out by the toneless blat of the plastic horns.

Some say foreigners should quit grumbling and embrace the local culture. But others, particularly those who have sampled the stadium vibe in England, are less understanding.

'When you play in England, you are used to the good atmosphere because the people sing,' Denmark and Stoke City keeper Thomas Sorensen said Monday after his side's 2-0 loss to the Netherlands in Soccer City. 'But here it is just a constant noise, even when the goals are scored.'

Not even the throats of the notoriously fervent South Korean fans, watching their team beat Greece in Port Elizabeth on Saturday, or Argentines celebrating their victory over Nigeria in Johannesburg's Ellis Park the same day, could overpower the vuvuzelas.

Fans at Germany's impressive 4-0 drubbing of Australia in Durban on Sunday fared slightly better, but most of the fun was had on the beach beforehand, as fans splashed in the sea and soaked up the sun.

Even Danny Jordaan, head of the local organising committee, said he preferred singing to the vuvuzelas, which became popular in South Africa during the 1990s and are not widely used in the rest of Africa.

'In the days of the struggle (apartheid) we did not blow anything, we were singing,' he told the BBC.

The good news for horn-hating foreigners is that there is a more European experience to be had in bars and other unofficial viewing areas.

During England's 1-1 draw with the United States on Saturday, the Dubliner bar on Cape Town's Victoria & Alfred Waterfront was seething with a partisan crowd.

The sole vuvuzela was shouted down by English fans who directed their wide repertoire of often-abusive songs at a startled cluster of flag-draped American teenagers. When Steven Gerrard slotted home, the bar exploded into a frenzy of roaring supporters.

The half-time show consisted of a tabletop dance-off between a heavyset, middle-aged English supporter with running face paint and a pretty young American girl.

To raucous laughter, the young American shuffled awkwardly while her inebriated competitor's bump-and-grind brought the Englishwoman reeling perilously close to the edge of the table.

For England fan Stephen Smith, 30, from London, who attended France v Uruguay's 0-0 draw in a near-capacity Green Point stadium on Friday, this was more like it.

Smith - travelling around South Africa with a group of friends who paid almost 9,000 dollars each for the trip - put the poor stadium atmosphere down to the vuvuzelas and the lack of concentrated team support.

'In Green Point, there were lots of people from different nationalities who weren't supporting the teams,' he told the German Press Agency dpa. 'Tonight, we've got the songs.'

The relatively small number of foreign fans - the organizers have revised their estimate down from 450,000 to 300,000 - is undoubtedly a factor.

US fans Jamie Marie and Stephen Turner, who went to Germany in 2006, came down from Vienna with their 16-month-old son. They feel the lack of foreign fans is key.

'In Germany, it was amazing,' Stephen Turner told dpa. 'But there it was easier, you had all those countries around where people can come from. Here it's much further, and a lot more expensive.'

Thousands of Germans have followed the tournament south, and they created their own party in Cape Town's Paulaner Brauhaus during their team's resounding victory. They swigged down beer brewed to the Munich-based brewery's original recipe and sang rousing choruses of traditional German football songs.

But for all the criticism, not everybody finds the stadium atmosphere a damp squib.

Musa Mhlanga, an American scientist working in Johannesburg, attended Monday's Italy-Paraguay game in Green Point, as well as the Argentina-Nigeria game.

Mhlanga, who enjoyed watching Nigerian fans carry out a pre-match sacrifice of a chicken painted in the green and white of the national flag, compared the atmosphere favourably to games in Europe.

'Coming into the stadium the atmosphere is really nice. There's a lot of revery, fanfare and dancing,' he told