Ban the Vuvuzela?

As expected, the vuvuzela is causing a bit of a stir at the World Cup 2010. And it’s prompting a huge number of really silly comments on news sites (BBC, Sky News etc) – mainly from people whining about how they don’t like the noise.

Ag, shame.

It’s like watching the game in the middle of a beehive.

Is it? How exactly have you worked this out, because you seem very sure. Have you got vast experience of watching football matches in apiaries? Wouldn’t the whole stinging thing be worse than the noise, anyway? Presumably, you took some sort of Epi-pen or similar anti-histamine device with you to counteract any anaphylactic shock caused by being repeatedly stung. I could never do that beehive thing.
Admittedly, I did get very drunk and watch a couple of games from Korea/Japan 2002 in an anthill, but ants are pretty quiet and so the atmosphere wasn’t great. I’m not sure I’d be welcome back anyway after I fell over and broke an egg chamber – and my evening ended as I was thrown out by the bouncers. All 1,280,000 of them.
But bees – I might give that a go. Honey sandwiches all round, what ho!

Patrice Evra – We can’t hear one another out on the pitch because of them.

Patrice, dude. I was there on Friday night. It really wasn’t very loud at all. Do you know what I think? I think that your team didn’t get three points because they actually didn’t play very well. Your strikers couldn’t hit a cow’s arse with a banjo and your right back had a particularly bad game.
What – that was you? Oh – how embarrassing.
Anyway, it looked to me like Germany didn’t have many problems hearing each other on the pitch last night. Maybe it was a different kind of vuvuzela in Durban. Or maybe they just have louder voices. Or maybe they actually just played well.
And it’s not like you Frenchies don’t have a bit of history with annoying trumpets at your stadiums, is it? Who could forget that horrid little fanfare thing you repeatedly played over the PA systems at the 2007 Rugby World Cup to occasionally keep people interested? Or that annoying singing sound you call La Marseillaise?

Presumably Thierry and Sidney were blaming the ball for their errant shooting as well. It’s true that it does fly slightly differently at altitude, but then you weren’t at altitude for Friday’s match. Well – you were at about 15m altitude, I suppose. Would you like us to move all the stadiums to sea level for you? The salt water won’t do the grass much good, but then you can blame the pitch as well.
I did note that Germany were also virtually playing on the beachfront last night and I have to say that my good mate Miroslav didn’t seem to have much trouble with getting shots on target.
Probably a different ball thing, right?

Also – no protests from Mexico, who faced a 90,000-strong plastic trumpet army on Friday.
But then, they’re not French, are they?

I find them very uninspiring and I have to get up leave the room.

Patrice? Is that you again?
No – it’s some England fan from England commenting on the Sky News site. And he’s proving himself wrong. How can he call them uninspiring when he is inspired to get up and leave the room? That’s inspiration right there.
I was also inspired to get up and leave the room by Robert Green’s horror show and England’s lacklustre performance on Saturday evening, but as long as we’re talking about vuvuzelas, we’re not talking about that, are we? It’s Julius Malema style diversion tactics (as copied by Patrice Evra).
And anyway, could it have been a surprise blast from a plastic trumpet that made the England keeper spill that weak effort into the goal? Or perhaps the fear that he was being attacked by some bees?

Ha! What a pathetic shot, Mr Dempsey. I won’t even need to get my body behind that one, even though it’s the first thing they teach you at goalie school. I’ll just – ARGH! BEES! I’M BEING ATTACKED BY SOME BEES! – oops!

Look. The vuvuzela is part of the African football experience. I’m sorry you don’t like it. But what you like is not of interest to me right now – you want a World Cup in Africa, then have an African World Cup. Otherwise, let’s just go back in sterile Germany every four years with their wonderful trains, half-decent Weissbier and concerning habit of occasionally annexing other nearby nations.
Actually, it’s my concern that the traditional samba drums will prevent players hearing each other on the pitch in Brazil in 2014. But although we’re all aware of that potential issue right now, several years in advance, let’s rather wait until the first few days of the tournament and then have all the players and fans of teams that turn in below-par performances complain bitterly about it.

Ban the vuvuzela? Good luck to you.
As the (South African influenced) Kaiser Chiefs once sang: “I predict a riot”.

EDIT: Sepp’s on my side

EDIT 2: Pierre de Vos hits the real nail on the head.