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South America’s skillful footballers have had Indonesian football fanatics glued to their television screens during this year’s World Cup in South Africa, with the matches most watched by local viewers involving teams from the continent.

Audience figures collected by AGB Nielsen Media Research in 10 major cities across the country from June 11-26 showed that the World Cup showdown between Portugal and Brazil, broadcast live on June 25 on private television station RCTI, drew the highest ratings of 9.4 percent, or 36.8 percent audience share out of the 4.6 million total average number of viewers on that day.

Andini Wijendaru, a spokeswoman for Nielsen, told the Jakarta Globe on Thursday that the Argentina versus Nigeria match on June 12 came in a close second for the most-watched game by the country’s football fans, drawing a rating of 9.2 percent, although it had a 36.9 percent share of that day’s audience.

Football enthusiast Gunther Tampubolon told the Globe that the fact the five-time world champion Brazil was playing against European powerhouse Portugal, captained by the most expensive player in football history, Real Madrid star Cristiano Ronaldo, might have been the reason why the game was the most-watched here.

“Both teams play offensive styles and the game was expected to be a crowd-pleaser,” he said.

Similar reasons were given for why Indonesians tuned in to watch two-time world champion Argentina play their opening match of the World Cup finals.

“Football fans were curious to see how the team would play under Diego Maradona’s coaching,” Gunther said, referring to the legendary and controversial Argentinian footballer who is now coach of the national team. “Not to mention the team has a new superstar in Lionel Messi.”

But Gunther, who works as a civil contractor in Jakarta, said most viewers would have been disappointed by the much-hyped Portugal versus Brazil match, which ended scoreless, saying the way the teams played turned out to be rather “mediocre.”

“The teams were just playing it safe because they had already made it into the knockout stage,” he added.

Agung, a 25-year-old student from Bali, said the showdown had been one of the most anticipated matches of the tournament because both teams were crowd favorites. “Even for girls who normally don’t watch football, the match would have drawn their interest,” he said.

But Agung, who watched the match with friends at his boarding house, also said the game had been a letdown.

“It was a bit disappointing because the two teams did not look for any points,” he said. “But the anticipation created a lot of hype before the match started.”

Indonesian audiences for World Cup matches have also been among the biggest of 32 countries surveyed by Nielsen from when the tournament started on June 11 to the end of the first knockout stage on June 26.

Nielsen’s Andini said the country had the highest percentage of viewers on June 24, when crucial games to decide who went through were played out between Ghana and Germany, Australia and Serbia, Slovakia and Italy, and Paraguay and New Zealand.

“On that day, Indonesia led the global football viewership with 47 percent of its television population watching the games,” she said.

The highest concentration of Indonesian viewers was on June 13 with 49.2 percent of the television audience, which made it the fourth-highest number of football watchers from the 32 countries surveyed, Andini said.

That day’s matches saw England face the United States, Algeria play Slovenia and Serbia clash with Ghana. The countries with the highest percentage of viewers on June 13 was Serbia with 55 percent, followed by Slovenia and Croatia at 53.4 percent and 49.9 percent respectively.

“The evening-to-dawn live broadcasts of World Cup matches on Global TV and RCTI have doubled the average number of viewers during those hours to three million per day,” Andini said.