Alright so yesterday I got this itch to find out exactly when Argentina played during the 2010 World Cup. Yeah, full schedule. Sounds simple, right? Spoiler: it wasn’t.
The Dumb Search Begins
Started simple. Typed “2010 World Cup full schedule” straight into Google. Figured FIFA’s own site would be top result. Clicked it. Ugh. Their stupid archive section felt like a maze. Page looked ancient, links were broken half the time. Clicked “Matches” – bam, page loaded wrong. Got a 404 error. Nice one, FIFA.
Tried Wayback Machine next. Found an old FIFA snapshot. Finally landed on the groups page. Phew. Saw Argentina was in Group B. Noted down their opponents: Nigeria, South Korea, Greece. Progress.
The Time Zone Nightmare
Biggest headache? Times. The times listed were all South Africa local time (SAST). Totally forgot the time difference. Needed my local time.
- Stared at my screen trying to remember if SAST was GMT+2
- Pulled out my phone to double-check time zone conversion tables online
- Realized I’d mess up AM/PM if I did this manually for every game
Felt dumb wasting 20 minutes just to figure out if 13:30 SAST was breakfast or lunch for me.
Manual Tracking Disaster
Decided to go full caveman mode. Opened Excel. Started typing:
- Column A: Date
- Column B: Local Time
- Column C: My Time Zone
- Column D: Teams Playing
Got halfway through Group Stage matches… spilled coffee on my keyboard. Half the entries got erased. Wanted to scream.
Finding the Actual Dates
Finally found a halfway decent football stats site (wont say name cos rules). Filtered to “World Cup 2010”. Scrolled past endless ads. Found the full fixture list.
Argentina’s Group Stage games? Here they were:
- Argentina vs Nigeria: June 12, 2010 @ 16:00 SAST
- Argentina vs South Korea: June 17, 2010 @ 13:30 SAST
- Argentina vs Greece: June 22, 2010 @ 20:30 SAST
Copied those bad boys straight into Notepad. No formatting, just raw text. Saved it as “world_cup_2010_*”. Worked.
The (Slightly Lame) Final List
Finished my list. Added knockout stages too:
- Round of 16: Argentina vs Mexico, June 27, 2010 @ 20:30 SAST
- Quarter Finals: Argentina vs Germany, July 3, 2010 @ 16:00 SAST
Important lesson learned: For knockout stages? FIFA only gave date & slot (“Quarter Final 3”), not teams. Had to cross-reference with winners later. Annoying.
Wrapping Up
Took screenshots of the final fixture list from the stats site. Pasted everything into a simple Word doc. Added big fat GROUP B and ARGENTINA MATCHES headers. Hit save. Done.
Total time wasted? Almost 2 hours. Feels silly now. Still grumpy at FIFA’s broken archive. Coffee stain on keyboard remains. But hey, got my schedule!