While Japan is busy preparing for its crucial match against France here on Thursday, some of the players’ parents are having a whale of a time, going around the city.
“The arrangement [at the hotel] is good, we are having a nice time,” said Keito Nakamura’s mother, gleefully showing photographs of her astride an elephant.
Eager to chat, but unable to converse in English, she tried to put her point across. When asked for how long her son has been playing football, she answered counting her fingers, “Five.”
As they pose for photographs, they tell the jersey numbers of their children for easy identification.
Boisterous group
A travelling fan contingent is not something many countries are blessed with at this World Cup. But not Guinea. It was egged on throughout by boisterous group of 45 people, who had travelled all the way from West Africa, with the chant “Gbing bin so, Gbing bin so” [We are scoring a goal] ringing the loudest.
At times they seemed much more than 45, more so in a half-empty stadium.
So contagious were their actions that a bunch of Goan kids chose to amp up the volume on behalf of the Costa Ricans. Only that they were no match.
All they could come up with was “Costa Ricaa, Costa Ricaa,” before finishing with their own — rather uninspiring — version of “Gbing bin so”!