Players, Fans Fight Over Horns at Confed Cup

I walked into my boss's office earlier this week. He was watching the Confederations Cup, which meant he wasn't working. When your boss is watching TV and not working, it's a good idea to stay in his office as long as possible, since then you don't have to work either. Problem was, his TV sounded like it contained a vibrating alarm clock filled with 513 coked-up bumble bees playing cymbals while electrocuting themselves.

"What the hell is that sound?" I asked.

"Horns," he said.

More precisely, the sound was the vuvuzela, the omnipresent plastic South African rooting instrument that has suddenly become a vital international issue, with observers predicting the horns will make the 2010 World Cup the loudest in history. Some players are bothered by the racket, saying they can't even hear their coaches; "The vuvuzelas are an annoyance and add nothing to the atmosphere, they should be banned," Spain's Xabi Alonso said. And some local fans have struck back.

"He must never repeat or utter such words again!" one blogger wrote, I believe in all seriousness, but possibly in an attempt to mimic the mock-melodramatic detachedly-ironic outrage of the American sports blogger. "Look I understand it should be a little odd and disturbing and different for them because they are not used to playing in such surroundings ... Look the damn things are loud but it is our culture, jese and they have these other new one’s manje, the one’s that sound like a baby crying but it’s smaller and the other winding thing that makes the sound of an old fire alarm, or 1960’s police van."

Yeah. Jese. And it wasn't just bloggers; legitimate sports journalists have fired back at the critics, with Bareng-Batho Kortjaas of the Sunday Times saying Vuvuzela critics "can all go and jump in a lake as far as I am concerned.” Another South African scribe wrote that local fans must "come out with guns blazing in defense of our beloved Vuvuzela." I think it was a metaphor, though heavens knows wars have been fought for stupider reasons than in defense of a clangy plastic sporting noisemaker.

And anyhow, the noisemakers, which apparently originated as antelope horn trumpets, are as vital to South African football as camouflage pants are to the NFL; "My vuvuzela will be part of my life," one fan told the AP.

The point is, this particular noisemaker just blends into the background at some point, like Rock & Roll Part II or Skip Bayless, and so it's probably not worth us foreigners complaining about.

"If you don’t like vuvuzelas, tough luck," one angry fan wrote. "Buy yourself a vuvuzela and I’ll happily teach you to blow it. Remember: if you can’t beat them, join them."

For more of Dan Steinberg, visit his blog with The Washington Post, D.C. Sports Bog.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.