Richard Calland

South Africa 2010 has been a success. It’s official. The world’s second best newspaper (after the Mail & Guardian of course), the Financial Times, said so today. In an editorial. So it must be true. The naysayers and racists were wrong; Africa can do it. Yes we can! Emma Hurd of Sky News, and all […]

To have lost 3-0 would have been better, far better, than this. Sport, mirroring life, can be cruel. Very cruel. Ghana had showed such character and discipline in withstanding Uruguay’s sustained initial onslaught, carefully restoring parity in possession, to the point whereby with the first half on the point of expiration, the Black Stars had […]

The biggest game of the tournament is upon us. Every World Cup has a game such this — a final outside of the final so to speak. When the two teams that are probably the best — or, at least, the most effective and on-form — meet. Brazil vs Holland in PE this afternoon. Spain […]

I am not sure which was more scary. The hairy, heavy Vry Staater in a boep-clinging Bafana shirt or the big black dude beneath a Bloem Celtic cap I encountered in the gents at half time on Tuesday. As I manoeuvred between them to attend to pressing matters I was caught in the vice of […]

After all Sepp Blatter’s blather about an ‘African World Cup’, the sad irony is that we are on the verge of the unthinkable: that none of the six African teams will make it through to the second round. All six pack, but no cigar — is one way of putting it. Certainly, the chiseled torsoes […]

I thought I was getting away from politics for a while. But I now realise that the vuvuzela is to these World Cup blogs what Julius Malema is to my politics columns: a noisy, but sadly unavoidable irritant. With both Malema and the vuvuzela, their importance is far overstated. Malema: South Africa’s Robert Mugabe? I […]

There is not much point in having a World Cup blog on such a respectable website if you are not going to take the opportunity to masquerade as an expert football analyst. By profession I am a lawyer, by instinct a sports commentator. And having attended around 300 Arsenal games in my life so far […]

There are some moments in life where you have to put aside well-honed cynicism and a diligently instilled sense of perspective. So it was for me on Friday. My usual column on politics — Contretemps — was on page 32 of the Mail & Guardian and it argued that, alas, for all the excitement, new […]