This summer’s World Cup is the first to take place on the African continent. In honour of this global event, we profile the spectacular soccer stadium that has been wowing the world as it graces millions of screens – Soccer City in Johannesburg.
Exterior of Soccer City, Johannesburg © Shine 2010 - 2010 World Cup good news, flickr.com
Soccer City is a highly individual stadium which provides South Africa with a world-class sporting arena and an iconic emblem to boot. With over 94,000 seats, it is the biggest football stadium in Africa, and the seventh biggest in the world. It first opened in 1989, but has undergone renovation to increase seating capacity, improve facilities, add an encircling roof and install new floodlights.
Reflecting on the redesign, FIFA President Sepp Blatter named Soccer City as “one of the best venues” in the world, calling it a “five star stadium”.
The stadium fuses traditional with ultra-modern, combining stunning design and cutting-edge technology with a healthy dose of individuality and character. Its unique shape was inspired by the calabash, a large vine gourd traditionally used as a container for food or drink. The Soccer City design also draws inspiration from traditional African pottery, represented in the earthen, mosaic colour scheme and the lights which encircle the stadium, simulating fire beneath a pot.
Football fans enjoy the view © Shine 2010 - 2010 World Cup good news, flickr.com
The new seating plan ensures that no spectator is more than 100 metres from the action, with unrestricted views throughout the stadium. And, with over 7,100 tons of structural steel and 80,000m² of brickwork, the venue has been built to last far beyond the 2010 World Cup.
The concrete-panelled façade features 10 vast vertical lines which are illuminated during evening games. They represent the ten venues across South Africa which will be used throughout the tournament, highlighting the road from the opening ceremony to the final.
Over the coming weeks we’ll be profiling some venues closer to home when we take a look at the stadia hosting football during the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, starting with Wembley Stadium.
Fancy starting a Mexican wave of learning in your maths lessons? Here you’ll find some imaginative ideas and resources to help you link this year’s World Cup to your teaching.
Stadium shapers: key stage 2 or 3
From Herzog & de Meuron’s ‘Birds Nest’ in Beijing to the curvy wave of Zaha Hadid’s Olympic aquatic center and on to Soccer City's gourd-like stadium, sporting grounds are no longer just plain old rectangles!
Why not compare different stadia to see how many shapes you can find? How does the type of sport played affect the shape of the sports ground? For example, how does the shape of a cricket ground differ from a football stadium?
Ask students to design a stadium for their favorite sport incorporating three of the following shapes: oval, rectangle, octagon, triangle, pentagon or trapezoid. Students can embellish the exterior of the stadium to cater for additional shapes.
Team Tracker : key stage 1, 2 or 3 pupils
Depending on the size of your class, allocate individual students/pairs/groups one of the 31 teams (not including England) taking part in the 2010 World Cup. Firstly ask them to create a briefing pack on their country. Comparing figures such as population or currency against the UK.
Next, ask the students to produce a table which will record vital statistics such as goals scored or points accrued during the World Cup group stages. The task will be to record their team’s progress during the tournament. Ask the students to think of different graphs and tables they could use to output these findings.
As teams are knocked out you may want to allocate children to a different team. By the Final game you might have half of the class working on one team’s information grid, with the other half recording the statistics for their opponents.
The Final Countdown: key stage 2 or 3 pupils
Seven countries have won the World Cup. Utilise footballing history to create a series of numeracy-based activities linked to the World Cup Final.
Which country has won the most times? Which team scored the most goals on their route to glory? Ask students to find the mean, mode and median number of goals scored in the World Cup finals. What is the sum of all the World Cup Final stadium attendances added together?
The results of calculations and research could be displayed using charts. Why not ask your pupils to decide which would be the best way to communicate their findings?
Beat the bookie : key stage 3 or 4 pupils
Why not compare the official world rankings of the 32 teams playing in South Africa with bookmaker’s odds to create a scatter graph highlighting the probability each team has of winning the World Cup?
You can find the official world rankings for each team in the competition here http://www.fifa.com/worldfootball/ranking/index.html. Do an internet search for online bookmakers to find out each team’s current odds of winning.
Ask the students to predict who they think the winners will be. Plot the results on a scatter graph. Determine the line of best fit and discuss any anomalies. Are there any teams who did better or worse than expected? Why might this be? Link this activity into a wider discussion about the everyday applications of probability.
For more inspiring lesson plans and activities visit our teaching resources section.
