This is street game

The kids run over the broken tarmac surface kicking a ragged and deflated football, its panels hanging off from the concrete wear and tear. Their bare feet seem to take the strain though. The pitch is the width of the narrow litter strewn street, the goals are breeze blocks, cracked and up turned. The pace is frenetic, the scores are high. There’s a chicken on the field, chased away by a stray dog, and a car passes by interrupting play. An angry woman tosses scoldings from a cardboard clad window, but they are lost in the din from a nearby boom box, so the kids carry on, and the onlookers, many adult, cheer. That same window, one can safely assume by the severity of the scoldings, was once glass. This is ‘street game’. Township street football: Grassroots football, South African style.

They play for ‘5 bob’, 50 cents. Each child pitches in a small handful of precious copper change and to the winners go the spoils, enough to buy chips and a cool drink from the coca-cola sponsored ‘Spaza’ next door, the tin-clad grocery store.

Players turn out mostly in Chiefs and Pirates shirts. Kaizer Chiefs, Orlando Pirates, the big teams from Soweto, the big teams in the township. They’re not from round here, this is Cape Town, and Cape Town Ajax sit close to the top whilst Chiefs and Pirates sit mid table, but this is South Africa and roots matter. Chiefs and Pirates are mainly black, Ajax are coloured. Their support comes from the coloured townships of the Cape Flats, here its all Chiefs. All Pirates.  Then obviously there’s Manchester, Chelsea and Liverpool. Everyone loves Liverpool here. ‘You’ll never walk alone’ they say in all things bar Scouse. English flags here fly in equal numbers to their South African counterparts. Rooney and co will be warmly received. They like the English in the townships.