MOSCOW: Moscow AS you sit in the plane waiting for Moscow to magically appear out of the window, there is one thing that lingers on in your mind. There’s something wrong about this World Cup. Something missing. A spell gone wrong somewhere, for the excitement that this evokes is not quite what Brazil did four years ago. Maybe it’s the fact that we know this will never be the pinnacle of the beautiful game that it is billed to be. Can any of the 32 teams at the World Cup hold a candle to the kind of football that Manchester City showcased over the season? Only three of the coaches at this year’s tournament have managed in the Champions League over the last five years.
Not exactly the pinnacle of world sport! Maybe it has to do with the absentees. The Dutch with their colourful fans and breathtaking football, the Italians with their big names and their proud pedigree, the Chileans who have dominated South American football over the last four years and Gareth Bale, who decided the second biggest match of the season, the Champions League final, dwarfed in sweepstakes only by the World Cup final. Or maybe it is just the barrage of negative headlines that has plagued Russia and FIFA over the past couple of months taking its toll.
The headlines, going into Russia 2018, have not been about teams and players, but about hooliganism, racist chants and diplomatic boycotts. Just days before the World Cup, Ghana’s goalkeeper Richard Kingson revealed that he was offered money to fix matches in the 2006 edition. He did not accept it but what if others had? What if many instances of what the world believed to be magic were just carefully crafted facades? But then the plane touches down and Moscow begins to do its magic. Jose Mourinho frowns down upon you from a huge billboard, while the airport buzzes with volunteers wearing the signature red of the tournament.
As you wait in a long queue for customs, Arsenal star Henrikh Mkhitaryan silently slips past, almost as deftly as he evades rival defenders, as fans gasp at who they just saw. Out in Moscow’s famed Red Square, a group of Argentina fans announce their arrival by unfurling their country’s flag and shouting something in Spanish at bemused Russians, the colourful Saint Basil’s Cathedral serving as a fitting background to their antics. A few kilometers away, the Luzhniki Stadium, set to host the opener and the final, is a beehive of activities. Journalists film podcasts in multiple languages while volunteers hurriedly stock fans shops with merchandise.
In front of you, a couple of journalists walking towards the stadium’s entrance marvel at the brand new gates and say: “That wasn’t here when I came in March.” And as you spot a huge statue of Vladimir Lenin, his eyes raised to the sky in pride, with a renovated Luzhniki — brand new on the inside but plastered with that old world Soviet charm on the outside — as a backdrop, the doubts start to dissolve. The World Cup is here. And one would be a fool not to get excited about it.
vishnu.prasad@newindianexpress.com
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