Yesterday, Olympic Women’s Football came to Newcastle so I went wandering around St James’ Park looking for tall attractive blonde women with the Swedish flag painted on their face – there were none to be had though and in fact I saw nobody that I wanted to photograph. In all honesty I was quite surprised at the lack of atmosphere … there was absolutely no passion on show at all.
Today, however, was entirely different – initially I chased after a bloke in the distance carrying a New Zealand flag but ultimately I changed my mind and didn’t approach him but this had carried me into the proximity of St James’ Park again and today there was a real buzz. Brazil v New Zealand – Olympic Men’s Football – and the Brazilians were up for this one!!! There was a real carnival atmosphere with loads of hooters, drums, Brazilian football shirts everywhere you looked (this is what was missing yesterday – I saw more Colombian shirts than Swedish or Canadian and the Colombians weren’t even playing).
There were leprechaun hats (well that’s what they looked like to me anyway), performance artists on stilts or juggling etc, flags, banners, and YES … there were one or two attractive women 😉 … this is the passion I had been looking for!!!
And New Zealand? Well none of them agreed to be photographed and I was told on one occasion that what I was doing was “kinda creepy“. Ah well!
So 8 Brazilians and 0 Kiwis later the final prediction was inevitably a bit biased …
Brazil 12 – 1 New Zealand
… which perhaps flattered even Brazil, but I’m pretty sure they will be happy with the 3-0 they actually got.
Congratulations to my first couple of strangers, Lucas and Helena that predicted the score correctly …
… almost as positive as my 5-0 champion …
… I especially loved his comment that it would be one goal for every World Cup Winners star emblazoned on his shirt !!!
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