Though their eyes and ears will undoubtedly be fixed on the cacophony of sensations showering down from all storied corners of the Estadio Azteca, for many of the South African team walking out to face World Cup co-host Mexico on Thursday to kick off the tournament, there will be a fleeting moment when they are transported back through time.
The calendar will flip back exactly 16 years to June 11, 2010. It’s the same date, the same Mexican opposition, and even the same occasion – a World Cup curtain raiser – but the time travelers are not the same. They are kids again, standing wide-eyed in front of tv screens or, if they were lucky enough, at Johannesburg’s Soccer City stadium, as Siphiwe Tshabalala plants his right foot and prepares to let fly.
The ensuing seconds are seared into the retinas of every Bafana Bafana (The Boys) fan. Tshabalala’s thunderous strike sends the ball rocketing into the top right corner of Óscar Pérez’s net and fires the tournament hosts ahead, as the blaring drone of vuvuzelas is – somehow – drowned out by a roar heard across the country.
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