Most
World Cup matches attended - Thulani Ngcobo sets world
record
PRETORIA, South Africa -- South African football fan
Thulani Ngcobo, 29, an asset controller with the Department
of Rural Development and Land Reform, attended 21 full matches
at the 2010 World Cup - setting the new world record for the
Most
World Cup matches attended by an individual.
Photo: Lungani Ngcobo, The winner of
the "Last Man standing" competition. Photo by Luigi Bennett
/ Backpagepix (enlarge
photo)
Staunch Kaizer Chiefs supporter and
football enthusiast Thulani Ngcobo has been attending up to
two matches a day.
His wide knowledge of football won him
the big prize of an all-expenses-paid trip around the country
and 38 World Cup matches.
"Ngcobo 2010" as he is commonly known,
entered and won the MTN8 Last Fan Standing competition in
South Africa last year, winning a prize to attend 38 World
Cup matches during 2010, and travelling more than 17,000 kilometres.
Ngcobo, who normally watched an average
of three soccer matches a week on a monthly budget of R2 000,
including travelling, said the award was a "dream come true".
In cases where Ngcobo arrived at a
match late (after the start whistle) or left early (before
the final whistle) in order to get to another match, those
matches do not count towards his World Record attempt.
He was only required to watch 21 full
World Cup matches to break the former record of 20, but now
his ultimate aim is to have watched 38 matches by the time
the last whistle is blown after the finals on Sunday July
11.
Out of the 38 matches, 31 would be
full matches while the other seven would be half-watched as
he would have had to leave for another match starting in another
city.
In the end he would have covered 17 000km
by road and air, watched over 3 400 minutes of live football
and been to all nine host cities and 10 stadiums around the
country.