The collective groan from the western soccer world was a mind-numbing as the hum coming from the Krestovsky Stadium crowd. It was a flashback, a stress reaction, something the world tried so hard to reject with prejudice eight years ago. I thought we were done with vuvuzelas, the world seemed to lament, the Saint Petersburg crowd thrusting us back into their 2010 hell.
It’s almost impossible to overstate how harshly the we reacted to South Africa’s vuvuzelas. From that World Cup’s opening moments, when the bass-heavy hum from the plastic air horns overwhelmed ESPN’s broadcasts, we recoiled with not only a sense of disdain but also injustice.