Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it’s much more serious than that. — Bill Shankly

BACKGROUND

I have been following England, in qualifiers, friendlies, and tournaments since England’s colourful qualifier in Bratislava in 2002, thus taking in the tournaments in Portugal (2004), Germany (2006), South Africa (2010), Ukraine (2012), Brazil (2014) and France (2016). My younger brother, Richard, started this lark having previously been to France (1998) Belgium and Holland (2000) and Japan (2002) and so takes all the blame for my attendance at England games as it was his idea in 2002 that we should meet up in Bratislava, a weekend memorable among other things for continuous pouring rain, a nasty bottleneck to get into the ground, getting charged at least twice by baton-wielding Slovak robocops, England winning 2-1 after being 1-0 down, Heskey playing well and one of the worst hangovers I have ever had, induced by a mixture of Slovak wine, and the local firewater, a kind of gin called Borovichka, with both of us being sick the following afternoon. Oh, and one of the fans in our hotel had been shot in the leg the night before in a bar and some others had been attacked by locals in a nightclub and Beckham of all people had to rescue them. But we had the chance to stand behind our flag, to be patriotic just like everyone from every other country in the world excluding us, to annoy the Thought Police and to see England win. If you follow England away as well, you will understand what I mean.

An additional piece of background to this is that I have lived in Ukraine since 1998, speak Russian fluently in an accent which occasionally they understand, and I worked in Russia itself for four years in that period, namely 2004 to 2007 in Voronezh, a town midway between Moscow and Rostov in the Black Earth agricultural region of Russia, and one year, June 2008 to June 2009 in the Kaliningrad enclave, where England were to play Belgium. While in Voronezh, I had bought a flat as an investment. Don’t ask me why, but it seemed like a good idea at the time when they were building a new block round the corner from where I was living. While it is true that the capital value in roubles has nearly trebled in the intervening period, unfortunately the rouble has devalued from 50 to the pound to 80 and this offsets the gain a bit. In any event, the tenant had left in February and it was my intention both to put the flat up for sale while using it as a base during the World Cup

PRELUDE – GETTING THERE

With my flat in Voronezh having become vacant in February, and wishing to take advantage of visa and registration-free travel in Russia for the duration of the World Cup to put it up for sale, I left for Russia earlier than most, so as to spend some days in Voronezh organising all of this. I left Dnepropetrovsk at 5 pm on a sunny Sunday afternoon, 10th June, five days before the start of the World Cup, on the daily train to Moscow, taking it as far as Kursk, where I arrived at 4 am the next morning, and then at 6 am a second train from Kursk to Voronezh where I arrived at 12.30.

The first few hours were largely uneventful. I was in an upper berth out of four, and started out from Dnepro with only one companion, an elderly gentleman in the lower bunk opposite who spent a lot of time muttering. Then the coupé filled up with a large young man who occupied the other upper berth and promptly fell asleep, and stayed so as far as Kharkov where he got off, and at Pavlograd with a largish lady in her sixties.

I have made this journey several times in the past, and the various inspections look for a different thing each time. We arrived at Kharkov at 10.45 pm and had an hour there for passports and customs. The customs officer, a youngish girl, had decided to pick on me. Why was I going to Russia? To watch the World Cup. Did I know that their president had recommended Ukrainians not to go? Yes, but I added I had read in the Kiev Post that some 4,000 of them were still going and besides which they hadn’t qualified and we had, so we had a reason to go. She asked me to switch on my notebook and whether I had any propoganda or pornography stored on it. “No” I said. She then took it and made a search for videos. I had a slight worry as I have lent this notebook to other people, but in the event the only videos that came up were some clips of me playing the piano. She looked a bit disappointed: not surprising as they have one hour timetabled to do all of their checks and she had spent 45 minutes on me. I’m sure the rest of the carriage were grateful.

From Kharkov, the train runs for another hour and a bit to get to Belgorod where it stops for another hour for a repeat performance on the Russian side. The last time I went this way the inspections were for pills and medicines and they took exception to the painkillers I had taken for the broken arm I had at the time, despite my having the prescription and I got a lecture on the evils of drug addiction. This time of course it was my lack of visa, and entering on the Fan ID. The lady had to call her supervisor, and they had a long discussion as to what to put as “purpose of visit” on the immigration card. Football was not on the list and I had left it blank for fear of getting it wrong and having to fill the whole thing in again. Should it be tourism or private? The supervisor opted for private. This seemed to be enough and at last one can get some sleep, but 10 minutes later another young man came and asked a lot of questions about football and what I was doing, how I knew Russian and whether I had worked in Russia before, all of which I answered. I knew what this was, it was the FSB (State Security Service). He seemed to find me on his system as he said yes, you had a different passport number then. I said yes, it was over 10 years ago. I can accept what he was doing as it was similar to the questioning we got prior to boarding for Israel. This time though there was a funny moment:

“How long will you be in Russia?”

“Till England get knocked out. By the way, four years ago in Brazil they asked exactly the same question and I gave exactly the same answer, but the policeman there then said “Well you won’t be here very long then” and I was able to thank him for not making the same remark.

Kursk, famous for the tank battle, was uneventful at that hour. On the second train I was lucky, I had the whole compartment to myself and a lower bunk. This train crawled painfully slowly, 6 and a half hours to cover 180 miles, including some very long stops, but at least I was able to sleep.

At 12.30 we crawled into Voronezh 1 and I walked the half mile or so to the flat to find the postbox crammed full of unpaid bills and the flat itself under about half an inch of dust.

PART ONE: THE OPENING – VORONEZH

Voronezh was founded in 1586 as a fort against the Tatars, and was developed in the 1690s by Peter the Great who established Russia’s first shipbuilding factory there. It may look odd to have ship building so far inland, but this area was then heavily forested and the trees were used for the ships. The story goes – usually told by people from towns nearby but not those from Voronezh itself – that after the ship building started, there was a shortage of women, and so Peter the Great organised large numbers of prostitutes to be sent there to service the ship builders, and – as the story then goes – the present inhabitants are all descended from them. In the Second World War Voronezh was an important staging point for the Germans advancing to Stalingrad, and the Russian army fought a major defensive battle here in 1942. Effectively the Germans advanced to the west bank of the Voronezh river, on which side most of the town is situated, and the Russians remained on the east bank. There were several battles, and one result was that some 90% of the buildings in the town were destroyed. Of the remaining buildings one is the beautiful little Pokrovka Church where I used to go when I lived there.

Tuesday 12 th was in fact Russia’s National Day or “Russia Day” as they call it, and Monday 11^th was also a Bank Holiday, so the World Cup was preceded by a four-day weekend which gave everything a very festive atmosphere, building up to the opening itself on Thursday 14^th. The television showed an almost endless stream of visiting presidents meeting President Putin and him saying nice things to them. The one which could have been the most fun could perhaps have been the visit from the President of Panama (can I have a passport please?), where it was mentioned that Russia was expecting some 4,000 fans from Panama, perhaps more than we will be taking to the match with them.

The climax to the build up must be the scale of Russia’s win over a disappointing Saudi Arabia, which left the country on something of a high. Especially this was the case as even many of them had not fancied their team, and the match produced a “new star” in Golovin.

So on that note I left Voronezh on the evening of Friday 15^th first for a two hour journey in a cramped platzcart coach (third class) to a remote junction called Gryaz-Voronezhski, which is where I am writing these lines, and where there is a television which has just shown Portugal score against Spain from a penalty, amd from where in a few minutes I have to catch an overnight train to Volgograd.

VOLGOGRAD

So, as you can see, I missed the rest of an exciting 3-3 draw between Spain and Portugal. The train was one of the new coaches, very clean and civilised, with a very tall elderly stewardess who introduced herself, and asked me if I wanted a late dinner or breakfast – the ticket includes a meal and it is up to the passenger to decide which one – so I opted for breakfast. My companions in this compartment were a talkative retired lady originally from Volgograd, but now living in Moscow, and a young man who got off after two hours at Borisoglebsk, and who sat just sat there grinning the whole time. Borisoglebsk is still in Voronezh oblast, so after travelling for 5 hours, I had not left Voronezh oblast, but that is more understandable when you realise that it is about the size of France.

The lady was interested in politics and I got the full works. What did I think of the Skripals? In response to my comment that I thought it was disgraceful that their people were putting the lives of our citizens at risk I was told it was not Russia who did it (well of course it wasn’t them, it never is) but then this switched to “we didn’t need the Skripals, nobody needs them and nobody cares about them, they got what they deserved” which is particularly hard on the daughter. What did I think about Theresa May, what about Scottish independence (a new one – I thought they had voted to stay, but you never know: Russkies are never wrong), the Crimea, Donetsk, etc etc etc. Mercifully her dinner came and I said I was off for a wash and was tired and wanted to sleep early.

I was woken up at 7 am for a nice airport style box with my porridge, bread butter jam and coffee, and managed to keep the conversation with the lady to her journey and where she was going, and how I should get to Alleya Geroev, establishing that it could be walked and that I did not need to worry about a bus. In return she showed me, as the railway entered Volgograd from the north, the new stadium and the Mamaev Kurgan with the big statue on it, on the way in (see picture above)..

Volgograd, which was completely rebuilt after the Second World War, is a city of wide boulevards and “Stalinka” architecture. The very centre seems oddly devoid of any shops. It took half an hour to find the hostel at Alleya Geroev, right by the fan zone, and to check in. At this point I found I had left my sponge bag on the train, very annoying as it had everything in it fo the month, and decided to see if I could find it. So I went back to the station, found that there is no such thing as a lost property office, but there is a station duty office, where a lady made some phone calls, found where the train had gone after arrival, found that this was just to their own local depot, made some calls there, and then told me they had found it, but I had to go to the wagon depot at Volgograd 2 station to get it and gave me a number to call. This I did, a dusty walk and tram ride, which took up the rest of the morning.

In preparation of the visit, I had read most of Anthony Beevor’s “Stalingrad” which I can recommend to anyone. It reads less like a history book and more like a novel. It also deals with aspects which both sides prefer to ignore, such as Stalin’s refusal to evacuate the city lest it appear defeatist, the number of desertions on the Russian side, including Russians who went over to fight for the Germans, executions of Russian soldiers by the NKVD and their own officers for “desertion”, which could include failing to stop other deserters, and resulted in over 16,000 executions of Soviets by their own men and so forth. Likewise, the absolute hell of the siege, and some genuine acts of heroism that are known.

The person I would mostly credit for the city not having fallen is Chuikov, who said he would hold the city or die in the event, so it is appropriate that the road leading to the museum is named after him. I spend the afternoon at the Stalingrad Museum, including an extra excursion they were doing during the period of the World Cup to explain aspects of the panorama on the upper floors. The main part of the museum deals with the siege and battle in chronological detail with a small admission by the Russians of what they were doing in 1939 and 1940 at a table containing copies of “The Law for the incorporation of West Ukraine into the Soviet Union”, “The Law for the incorporation of Moldova into the Soviet Union”, “The Law for the incorporation of Latvia into the Soviet Union” and “The Law for the incorporation of Estonia into the Soviet Union” under a picture showing Winston Churchill standing in the bombed out remains of Coventry Cathedral in 1940.

The upper part, the panorama is quite unique. It is a 360 degree view of the city from the top of Mamaev Kurgan, which overlooks it from the north east and which was a key strategic point during the siege changing hands many times. The view is a mixture of collage for the nearer items, and painting and roof for the further ones. The overall depiction is of the launch of the first counter attack against the Germans following the encirclement of the German Army by the two Russian armies, with individual incidents taken from other moments during the siege incorporated into it. These include a pilot who, on being shot down, did not bale out but steered his plane into the German lines, and another soldier, mentioned by Beevor, actually during Paulus’s last push into Stalingrad some months before, whose right hand had been blown off but who continued throwing grenades with his left hand, pulling out the pins with his teeth.

The cultural part of the day fulfilled, I spent the evening at a bar called Hatas, not far from the station, which had very good beer, some quite unbelievable looking girls, and the first other England supporters I had seen, who I joined for a few beers. Oh, and we also danced with the girls.

For Sunday, I had wanted to go to the Lutheran church if there was one. There is one. It is at Old Sarepta, about 18 miles from the centre, so I combined the trip to the church with a visit to Old Sarepta.

Volgograd itself was founded as Tsaritsyn during the reign of Catherine the Great, on the site of an earlier Tatar encampment. The name Tsaritsyn is Tatar, and means Yellow River, referring to the small River Tsaritsyn and Tsaritsyn gorge, which run into the Volga. After the Revolution, Stalin renamed the city in honour of himself as it was the site of some of his first atrocities during the civil war. Since everything was destroyed during the siege, very little of Old Tsaritsyn remains. There is the bombed out old red brick mill, next to the museum, which has been kept as a memory. There are one or two buildings rebuilt as they were, such as the Volgograd Hotel, and there is Old Sarepta.

Sarepta was a small town built by colonists from Saxony who were invited by Catherine the Great in the 1780s to form a colony to improve agriculture and manufacture in the area. They mostly belonged to a religious sect called the Band of Bretheren, and were responsible among other things of introducing mustard to Russia (both cultivation and production of mustsrd seed oil) tobacco production, vineyards and wine and beer production. This colony remained quite distinct until the 1890s when the Tsar took exception to their non-Orthodox beliefs and practices, and used the lack of any documentation of their concessions to abolish them. From that point until 1941, the colony either dispersed or intermarried with local Russians, then in 1941 the entire German population was deported to Siberia as potential collaborators. During the siege, the area was left alone by the Germans who appeared to know about its history and who wished to use it as an administrative headquarters following their supposed conquest of Stalingrad.. Since the demise of the Soviet Union, the Church, which dates from 1765, and adjacent Pastor’s House have been given to the German Lutheran Church, who financed their restoration, while the remaining historical buildings have been restored by the State.

Morning Service, which I attended was at 10 am. The service was in Russian, with odd bits, such as the creed and Lord’s Prayer, repeated in German. The church has a Steinmeyer Organ donated from Germany, similar to, but smaller than, the one in Odessa. Following the service, I was invited for tea with the Pastor’s wife and other members of the congregation. There was also a seminar including various visitors from a parish in Germany. Following that, I went to the museum on the other side of the church, and waited for a guided tour which they had organised, which took in the square and some of the other historical buildings of Sarepta. They also explained in some detail the frugal life styles and customs of the Band of Bretheren, which are something approaching the Amish people in the US today.

In the evening I was invited by Lillya, the owner of the hostel, to a screeing of a transmission from the New York Metropolitan Opera House of Massenet’s Cinderella, in a cinema at one of the shopping centres. She has a group of friends, all middle aged ladies, who meet up for these screenings, and as a group qualify for discounts. The centre was about half way to the stadium. I did not know this opera at all. To be honest the opera itself is not terribly memorable but the production was excellent and brought it to life. I had to leave just before the finale as Richard had finally arrived. Meeting with him, we had some really nice food and wine in a Georgain Restaurant on the Chuikov avenue, and watched Brazil mess it up against Switzerland. Our trip four years before to Brazil was such a disaster from a footballing point of view, while I found the country overrated and its people arrogant, so seeing the Hopp Suissers equalise was a nice moment. More to the point, while I was messing around doing other things, Mexico had beaten Germany 1-0. Woo hoo.

Monday was the day of the match, and Richard started with his early morning run up the Mamaev Kurgan and back, which was a lot further than he thought. I followed after breakfast, with a trip to the Mamev Kurgan for the FA’s wreath laying ceremony, advertised for 9.45. The Mamaev Kurgan itself is a huge Tatar burial mound (Kurgan means tumulus) and during the siege of Stalingrad was, at 102 metres, and overlooking the whole city, a key strategic point. After the war a massive stone monument, the Rodina Mat (Mother of the Fatherland) was erected there, and this is the symbol of the city. There is a similar Rodina Mat in Kiev – known less respectfully by the locals as “Tin tits”. On the green slope going up are the graves of the various generals and commanders involved in the defence of the city, and just below that is the eternal flame, in a cage where a loop plays some lines from Schumann’s Traumerei over and over again. Two guards stand motionless and at 5 to every hour there is a ceremony of changing of these guards where a squad slow goose-step in, replace the guards with two new ones, and then slow goose step out. After this, we had the wreath laying. There were three wreaths, with red and white flowers, one from the Football Association, one from the England Supporters, and one from the British Embassy. The Deputy Ambassador then made a very nice but simple speech recalling the historic ties between Britain and Volgograd, noting that the town twinning between Coventry and Volgograd was in fact the first town twinning made anywhere. She was surrounded by journalists who were trying to get her to say something memorable or controversial about the relations between Britain and Russia, and she held these off well, referring again to the fact that relations at that level can go up and down, but the relations between the peoples of both countries were good and long lasting, and commenting on the welcome we had received from the locals and how she was certain there would be no problems with hooligans. Of course the BBC man had to ask about LGBT supporters. Why this obsession. To my knowledge we haven’t got any – or if we do then they are quiet enough not to come into conflict with Russian laws, which in any event are to do with protecting children, not banning what anyone does behind closed doors. If anyone listening to that interview happens to hear at that point someone in the background saying “Oh do shut up”, well it was me.

There were so few of us who were supporters, we all ended up getting on one interview or another. I was on England TV, run by the FA, who were amused by my laconic predictions as to “How England would do”. I said that I had no expectations of England whatsoever, and that having been at the Iceland match, realised that there was no level to which we couldn’t sink. Realistically I expected us to underperform against Tunisia and scrape though 1-0, to which the interviewer replied “Well, that’s still a victory – I’ll take that”. Another lad who we were with later on at the fan zone got the BBC and ended up with his mug on the sport section home page of the BBC website for the rest of the afternoon.

The England supporters’ turn out in Volgograd was the lowest for some 20 years, a mere 2,000 with more noisy Tunisians than English. A combination of reasons, distance, cost, fear of hooliganism, poor relations between the countries, less exciting opposition, had kept people away. We went next to the Fan Zone for the South Korea-Sweden match, a scrappy messy affair full of errors, and again there were more tuna fish in the zone than English. A comment on the Fan Zone though which was beautifully laid out. It is situated in a park on steps leading down to the Volga Landing Stage, a little similar to the Potemkin Steps in Odessa, but greener and with neo classical columns on each side. The screen was at the bottom of the steps, and behind it, a view of the Volga and the other side.

The only two bad things in Volgograd – the plague of ticks, and the rule which we discovered too late, forbidding shops from selling alcohol, including beer, on match days. So only overpriced Budweiser or a Russian beer in a green can were available

Tunisia v England. I was full of trepidation for this, but we dominated the first 20 minutes completely, with a lot of near misses, some of them reminiscent of Sweden a few hours before. Sterling missed an easy one after 5 minutes and it affected his confidence for the rest of the match. Harry Kane scored after 11 minutes, and things started to go well apart from more near misses. Then the referee awarded Tunisia a very dubious penalty which he claimed was confirmed by the VAR. Having done that though, he failed to give us a penalty on two similar occasions, and completely ignored the Tunisian players who wrestled Jordan Hendersen and others to the floor. In the second half, England seemed to be slipping back into 2016 mode until Rashford came on for Sterling. Rashford did more in 5 minutes than Sterling had done in 60, and the tempo speeded up. We had a lot more chances, and in the second minute of injury time Harry Kane scored his second goal

This was followed by one of those moments that we get at a maximum once on every tour if that. To be honest this was the first since the Sweden match in Kiev in 2012. Everyone stayed behind singing, and no one wanted to leave. As Richard put it to an interviewer “you want to bottle these moments”. He had lost his voice as well, This time it was Radio 5 Live who interviewed us, and they did again the next morning at 8.30 as we found they had based themselves at the cafe right by our hostel. I forgot to give them my quote for those who had not come:

And Gentlemen in England now abed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here

And hold their manhood cheap

And so with happy memories of Volgograd, off to the station for the train to Saratov.

PART TWO – THE REST OF THE GROUP STAGES

INTERLUDE IN SARATOV

There were six days between our first match in Volgograd, and our second in Nizhny Novgorod. Nizhny is about two days by train from Volgograd, and one problem I have not mentioned is the overcharging which has been going on for accommodation in the host cities, and in which Nizhny has probably been one of the worst culprits. To give an example, in March I had tried to book an airbnb flat near the stadium for RUR 1,500 – about £20 – per night, then realised that I had input the wrong month and on correcting to the match days, found that they were charging RUR 40,000 – nearer £500 per night. I even wrote to the owner of that one asking him what planet he was on and he wrote back saying that “this was the normal price for those dates”. Other popular sites such as booking.com and Expedia showed similar prices. Trying Russian language sites, I had found a hotel charging RUR 11,000 per night (about £125), a mere three times its normal rate, and was about to book that when I found one on airbnb who had blinked and was asking RUR4,500, £60 and very close to the stadium.

I decided then to break the journey to Nizhny Novgorod into two, and took a train to Saratov, which is about a third of the way there. Here I found a penthouse with all mod cons for RUR 1,500, i.e. £20, and also the chance to see another Russian town.

My ride to Saratov took 9 hours and was very uneventful as, despite being in an upper berth, I had the whole compartment to myself. Arrival was frustrating as there were no maps and no one seemed to recognise my address. The flat owner, Victor was on holiday, and I was to be met by “his assistant Natalia”. I eventually found the flat via a series of phone calls to this lady who set out each stage for me. She was a nice middle aged lady who showed me round the flat and how everything worked. She said she was standing in for another lady, Yelena, who would meet me the next day to sort out my registration.

Saratov is situated on the Volga, further up river from Volgograd, and was founded in 1590, as – in common with many of the Volga cities – a boundary fort of the then Russian state in its advance against the Tatars, and its general push eastwards, which would go on over the years as far as San Francisco in the 19^th century. I was told that the name comes from SaryTau in the Tatar language, meaning “Yellow Mountain”. The city is notable for being a centre of immigration from Germany which was begun and encouraged by Catherine the Great who was herself of German extraction. Unlike at Stary Sarepta though, the numbers here were much greater. Germans were offered religious freedom and were exempted from military conscription, in return for contributing to agricultural and industrial development. and the total arriving in this region is thought to have been some 800,000 by 1900. While many settled in Saratov itself, the town on the other side of the river, now called Engels (yuck) but then called Pokrovsk, received more settlement, and became the capital of the Volga German Republic. In German this town was known as Kosakenburg (city of the Cossacks). Numbers increased during the First World War when ethnic Germans from further west were deported there so as to keep them away from the fronts. In 1941 however, the entire German population was deported, mostly to Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan, and I know one of them, the current Lutheran Bishop of Odessa, who is a Kazakh German.

I had missed the surprise defeats of Colombia and Poland, as I had been in the train. These are of interest to us as, if we get out our group, our second round matches will be against its first or second teams. I was in time though to see Russia’s 3-0 win over Egypt, meaning that their unfancied team had become the first to qualify.

For registration, the next day, I was met by another lady, not Yelena, but Svetlana, a slightly grizzly lady with whom I queued for half an hour to take photocopies and make the application, then another hour in another room to wait our turn, then another half an hour to process it. The girl processing was completely unaware of the exemptions for football supporters, and wanted a notarised translation of my passport and “why did I not have a visa” and would not listen to my attempts to teach her her own rules. She started to snap, so I adopted the rule which Richard and I call “Cardiff City” (it means you pretend you are a Cardiff fan, meaning you put on the most idiotic expression you can on your face and say absolutely nothing). So some time was lost while she found a supervisor who confirmed what I had said, and I even got an apology for the snapping. She did however keep my Volgograd registration which was a bit disconcerting. However I had a copy

There was an unpleasant event as we were about to leave. I was thanking Svetlana when she said “Well aren’t you going to pay me?” No one had mentioned this, I said. “Well do you think this is for free?” I said that in Volgograd it was. She wanted 1500 RUR. I told her that the registration is the responsibility of the owner of the accommodation (that part is true, however it is my responsibility to ensure that they do it, so you cannot cop out of responsibility on leaving the country by blaming your host). I have encountered some hotels making a charge of RUR 500 for this, and was about to offer that, but she rang Victor, who seems to have told her to leave off, as she waved at me contemptuously and said “It’s all right” and left the building. Quite grateful to have got out of that one, I left quickly in the opposite direction.

I walked up and down the streets which are laid out in a grid fashion at an angle of 45 decrees to the Volga. Eventually I passed a modern catholic cathedral and then an attractive walkway along the banks of the Volga. To the left was the bridge to Engels, which lies on the far side. I did not visit Engels. Fancy naming a town after the hunting-shooting-fishing-mill-owning backer of Karl Marx! Prospect Kirova is the street of most interest. This is mostly pedestrianised, and has a few bars. Outside one, there was a noisy group of Moroccans watching their team lose 1-0 to Portugal. I went up to the huge covered market, bought strawberries and cherries from an Azerbaijani stall holder (his accent in Russian was distinctive and maybe worse than mine) and unpasteurised milk and cheese from a Russian one, dumped these in the flat and then returned to Kirova to Papa’s Irish Bar to watch Spain beat Iran unconvincingly. There were some fellow Brits at another table – I say Brits as one lady was Scottish – so I am not the only one to have made Saratov a stopping point.

The next day I spent almost entirely in the flat, watching Denmark draw with Australia, the French win unconvincingly against the Peruvians, and to make my day, the Croatians thump the Argies 3-0.

On the third day, to leave the flat, I did get a call from Yelena. She was on holiday. So was Victor who in fact runs a business of 47 flats and who had been organising everything from his hotel in the Crimea. I also got an e mail from him “I have given you a 5 star review on airbnb, please give me the same”, which I did. Russia is so topsy turvy that the best accommodation was the cheapest, and some of the worst the most expensive.

NIZHNY NOVGOROD

The direct train to Nizhny runs on odd numbered days only and today was an even numbered day, so my journey comprised two trains. The first was a trip of five hours to Syzran, which I had thought was a junction. In fact it is a town where two main lines intersect at right angles, with their own stations, so this involved a change of stations, for which I had 5 hours. The attendant had asked me to translate for a group of English in another compartment. From their look, speech and behaviour, I would take them to be journalists. They were catching the same train in the evening, but on arrival at Syzran town station, they disappeared in a taxi and I never saw them again. At Syzran town I was beset by taxi drivers for the trip to Syzran 1 station from which the next train left. I had 5 hours, I said, why do I need a taxi? A station official gave me the first decent set of directions I have ever had in Russia – go up to the big yellow guilding in the distance, turn left at the lights there, and after 50 metres wait at the bus stop, then take number 28, all of which I did. At Syzran 1 I left everything in the left luggage office and returned to Syzran.

The town itself is quite small, has little in it which is old, and is another port on the Volga. There was a brand new church which, as do many new churches in Russia, manages to look as if it has always been there, while being brand new. On the way in I passed an overgrown park which had an attractive looking cafe with a terrace, so I jumped off the bus there, had an excellent steak, two pints of home made beer made with honey, and watched Nigeria beat Iceland. I started out wanting Iceland to win so as to put paid to the Argies, but really, I had forgotten just how irritating is that Icelandic clap and collective grunt that goes with it. So I ended cheering for Nigeria, even if it did mean that the Argies could be off the hook.

Russian time zones are weird, and they do not follow longitudes. Some years ago, Russia abolished summer time, whch means that in summer, Moscow is on Eastern European time the same as Ukraine. Volgograd and Nizhny are both still on Moscow time, which extends for a few hundred miles or so further east before becoming Moscow + 2, without a Moscow + 1. Yekaterinburg for example is Moscow + 2. There are, however small pockets of Moscow +1. Saratov is Moscow +1, and so was Syzran. It means that you can go in an easterly direction and then have to switch to an earlier time zone. Furthermore, since the railways operate throughout Russia on Moscow time, this can get very confusing. In fact in the far east, where there are 6 or 7 hour differences, it is less confusing than here where an hour’s difference can mean that you miss a train. So-called “helpful” smart phones which change automatically do not help at all if you do not realise that you have changed zone. I only picked up the change at Saratov, as my trusty old Nokia, which I was using for the Russian SIM, did not change automatically and so was an hour behind my usual phone. The other effect is in daylight times. In Nizhny, sunrise is at 3 am local time.

My train from Syzran 1 left just before midnight, and I arrived in Nizhny at 1 pm the next day. Just myself and one other occupant beneath, who was already asleep when I got on, and stayed asleep almost to the end, a girl who I would take to be in her mid teens. This train had come from Samara, and had stopped at Saransk. There were plenty of other fans on this train, a group of Charlton supporters, some Danes I met at a long stop where we got out to stretch our legs, an Australian, and a Scot who in the absence of his own side, was following Australia. Some of these were tournament junkies rather than supporters, i.e. they will go to the tournament and pick up tickets willy-nilly. Myself, due to the long distances I am not going to any non-England match, this time.

I arrived at Nizhny Novgorod in baking heat, 38 degrees according to the roadside thermometer and found the flat, Yamerochny proezd 6, a mere 500 yards from the new stadium, and its owner, Igor. Igor was still cleaning up from the previous occupants, an Argentinian pair, who had not been very happy and he offered me a beer from the fridge while I waited. What a flat and what an eye-opener into how many Russian live. This was the kind of flat known as “Khrushovka”, small flats built very cheaply in the Kruschev era, immediately after World War Two. A small kitchen, a toilet, to which Igor pointed out he had added a shower (no basin or bath) and a sitting room with two sofas which we had to roll out to make beds. There was a small bedroom in the middle with a cot, into which he had stuffed all of his own things, most of which seemed to be children’s clothes, toys etc. The kitchen had one of those gas “kolonkas” which he said I didn’t have to touch – I know these things, you strike several matches while they won’t light, then whoomph and your eyebrows have gone. The kitchen had old Soviet uniform plates and old Soviet pots and pans , including the inevitable coal black, grease encrusted frying pan with the handle missing. My late Father-in_law lived in just such a place. So it was quite obvious here, he had moved out for the duration of the World Cup, and was renting his flat out to fans. Given that he appeared to be penniless, and trying to bring up a young child, all the best to him.

I then went off to take a look at the town. Nizhny Novgorod is beautifully situated at the confluence of the Oka and Volga rivers, on the east side of the Oka. I was actually on the west side, which is where two large churches, the Yamerochny and the Alexander Nevsky are situated, and behind them, the new stadium. The first part of looking at the town then, was to cross the long bridge over the Oka. The town, on the other side has along history. It was founded in 1221 as a fort, but was not large enough to have been attacked by the Mongols, and was later incorporated into the Moscow Princeship. The Kremlin, which dominates the city was built between 1508 and 1511 and was strong enough to withstand several attacks by the Tatars. The City became the principal base for the Muscovites from which they, under Minin and Pozharsky attacked Moscow in 1612 to expel the Poles and establish there the Romanov dynasty (you will know this if you have seen the opera “Boris Gudunov”: it comes after all the “false Dmitry” bits). This victory in 1612 is now celebrated by a bank holiday in early November to replace the former 7 November holiday, and I remember a Polish colleague taking exception to it and marching back to Poland in a huff when they had it. The city developed as an industrial centre in both Tsarist and Soviet times, including the Volga car plant, shipbuilding and aircraft plants, and the relocation of much industry there following the German invasion in 1941. Nizhny itself was not occupied, but was heavily bombed as an industrial centre. Under the Soviets, it was renamed Gorky – it was the city of Maxim Gorky – and became a closed city. Amongst other claims to fame, it was the city to which the dissident scientist Sakharov was exiled, and it was where Matthyas Rákosi died,

From the end of the bridge, one can go along the river bank or along the parallel Rozhdestvenskiy Street (“Christmas Street”) a street of touristy restaurants, a bit like Podol in Kiev, and containing the Church of the Nativity, a church with barley sugar twists similar to those of St Basil in Red Square in Moscow. Half way along is the Volga boat station, and at the end, by the Church of St John the Baptist, is a winding series of rather jagged steps leading up to the Kremlin. As I was taking pictures here, I was passed by two girls, late teens, in heels and summer dresses. A bit later, I made my way up the steps. On the way up, a woman tried to warn me that they were very dangerous and I shouldn’t go up them. She kept shouting, as I shouted “nonsense” back at her. Next, there were some Panamanians who had made it half way, huffing and puffing. Feeling proud of myself for being fitter than all of these, I ran up to the top to find the same teenagers ahead of me. I asked one if she had done it in those heels. “Of course”, she replied. So much for feeling fitter or the steps being dangerous. There are some excellent views from the Kremlin. It is a walled area with a number of brick towers, most of them closed, and most buildings inside are closed since they are administrative or government buildings. From here I took a path running down the moat, back to St John the Baptist, then back along the river bank, to see Mexico’s win over South Korea in progress, but didn’t watch it, and back over the river to the flat

Richard arrived back from Dubai in time for Sweden v Germany. What a disappointment! I have heard that Gary Lineker has updated his famous remark that “Football is a game where 22 men chase the ball for 90 minutes and then the Germans win” to “ Football is a game where 22 men chase the ball for 82 minutes, the Germans get a player sent off, 21 men chase the ball for 8 minutes, and the Germans still win”.

The next day was a Sunday. Richard went off for his run, which retraced much of my walk the previous day. I went to morning service at the white-domed chuech next to the flat, This was the (Russian Orthodox) Saviour of Yaremochny Church. It is like a basilica in design, and with a superb choir and excellent accoustics. As with so many orthodox churches, there was no list of service times. One just turns up and people are walking in and out and around all the time. I had arrived during the gospel and stayed till the end. There did not appear to be a communion – or maybe the priests took it on our behalf – but people lined up to touch one or other of the icons, and to light candles. The public take minimal part in the services, and the only items where the public joins in are the creed and Lord’s Prayer, both in Church Slavonic, and both of which I know only in modern Russian. I would say that women outnumbered men four to one, and very colourful they all looked in their dresses and headcloths, crossing themselves and bowing at apparently random moments but occasionally together. Women have to keep their heads covered and should not wear trousers, men have to remove their hats, and I thought should not wear shorts, although one person was wearing them.

Maybe this is the time to mention Tom. Tom is a very large Geordie who lives in Kent, who I first met on a bus at Kiev Zhuliany airport some years ago. He was married to a Lithuanian from whom he is divorced, has a Lithuanian daughter, and speaks basic Russian but with an accent which is much better than mine. We have been in contact over the years as he visits Ukraine often and in 2014 he turned up at Dnipro’s Europa League final in Warsaw. A year ago he was supposed to turn up in Dnepropetrovsk on a train from Odessa but never arrived. Since he never has a mobile phone or does not seem to be able to be able to read his e mails, we put out a search for him. It turned out that he had missed the train, to have arrived by bus and gone straight to a hostel. When I went there, the hostel owner asked if in future he could stay somewhere else as he kept everyone up with his snoring. This time, he had been to Russia to travel on our route (Volgograd – Nizhny – Kaliningrad) the previous month, then back to Kiev to watch the Champion’s League finals. He had rung me up at home the week before I left “Can a kum an steaay with yer for a kupple o days as am fooked”, and had stayed 4 days before I put him on a night train to Kharkov. From there he had gone to Belgorod, where he met up with a friend, Liam from Manchester who talks nonstop the whole time as Tom himself does, and I had said they could use the Voronezh flat. It was Tom who had found the hostel for is in Volgograd, so I do have to thank him for that. We met again there, and I gave him the keys. The two of them then went off to Voronezh after Volgograd.

From then on they kept popping up all over the place. First, when Richard was on the train from Moscow to Nizhny. He had just settled down when he was awoken by a “Hellooooo Richard”. Next, when Richard was on his early morning run and had to divert round the back of the Kremlin because of various blocks set up to control the crowds, what did he get but “Hellooooo Richard” again? Tom was there with a group of friends who had been up drinking all night – I later heard that they had had some problems somewhere and had spent the night sleeping outside somewhere near the Kremlin. They hoisted Richard aloft like Bobby Moore in 1966 and chaired him all round the back of the Kremlin while Richard worried what would happen if they dropped him of worse, if the whole rowdy lot got arrested. Lastly the evening after the match, when we were walking along Bolshoy Pokrivskaya, a street which we must say was absolutely thronging with half the city (well the female half at least) and many supporters “Alan, awriite there, are you trying to avoid me” He was actually opposite some buskers and I could have sworn he was trying to collect money.

For the Panama match we had to make a huge detour round the ground, and got in about half an hour before the start. We were well outnumbered by the Panamanians, who had those irritating long inflated things which you bang together. This was the kind of match which more recent England teams would have won after struggling. We remember Trinidad in 2006, which we struggled to win 2-0. Not here. Stones scored after a few minutes. Panama were dire. This is what happens when you let in more and more third world countries for political reasons: you get lousy opposition. At both penalties they pushed and shoved and whined and whinged and the referee still wouldn’t book them. Both penalties were held up while they tried to put Harry Kane off. Unluckily for them, he is the last person anywhere to be put off. He put both penalties away very calmly and the second was a stroke of genius where he sent the goalkeeper the wrong way by putting the ball in exactly the same place as for the first penalty. Lingard’s goal was an absolute peach. This is the kind of goal we have been waiting for for years, a first time volley from some way out. 5-0 at half time. We needed one more to go ahead of the Belgians and got it when the ball bounced in off Kane’s heel. Kane is the third Englishman to score a hat trick in the World Cup after Geoff Hurst and Gary Lineker. Then Panama scored one and the ground erupted. This was a pity as it throws the first two places open, and also showed how sloppy our defence is.

Match over it was time for a stroll down Bolshaya Pokrovskaya which we reached via the metro and had the meeting above with John. But this street – vast numbers of girls, all of them beautiful, all nicely dressed. Moscow was very disappointing by comparison. Oh and we saw Columbia put out Poland in a bar which ran out of beer. I don’t know if it was us who drank them dry or everyone else.

SECOND INTERLUDE – MOSCOW

Actually this was a brief interlude of one night so as to break up the journey from Nizhny to Kaliningrad. The train from Nizhny to Moscow Kurskaya is a mere 4 hours, and from there we made our way to our hostel “Moscow Style” on Tverskaya near the Mayakovsky metro station. This turned out to be an office suite converted unsubtly and quickly into a hostel. There must have been at least 10 bunk beds in the main room of an open plan office, and we were lucky to get a bunk in the room of a smaller stand alone office. Two shower units were placed in what must have been the office kitchen and there were two toilets at the other end of the property, next to the water cooler. We were lucky in that, between matches, there were only half a dozen or so other guests. Heaven only knows what this is like when it is full – I would say about 40 guests in total – and with no segregation between men and women, not to mention only two toilets. For the record, our beds cost RUR 3,000 each (£60) or twice the cost of my penthouse in Saratov.

I met up with an ex colleague from my time in Kaliningrad. This was Denise, who had been chief lawyer at Sodruzhestvo during my time there and who had left two years after I had. We walked and ran down Tverskaya and the Arbat to find the Ulysses pub where he and his current colleagues had hired a back room to watch the Russia v Uruguay match. He was a lot bigger in build than he had been 10 years before, and had nice things to say about Kaliningrad as he had met the love of his life and mother of his daughter there.

We were late, and Uruguay were already 2-0 up, and so it stayed till the end of the match. After a few more drinks there we returned slowly via a Georgian restaurant which Richard had wanted to show me – he had been there on business trips – also off Tverskaya and watched Iran v Portugal, including Ronaldo missing a penalty.

The next day, I took Richard to see St Andrew’s Church, which is in Vosnessenskaya Pereulok, (Ascension Lane) a few streets further down Tverskaya from the Georgian restaurant. I have been here a few times in the past. This church was built in 1885 to serve the Anglican and Scottish Presbyterian communities in Moscow, and was dedicated to St Andrew, the patron saint of Scotland, as a compromise. It was designed by an architect from Bolton, and is the only Victorian Gothic structure in the whole of Russia. It is quite strange to be in the centre of Moscow, turn a corner and find one’s self by a typical English village church. The parsonage nearby is of similar design. During the Soviet time, the building was used as a recording studio by the record company, Melodiya, and the church was returned to the Anglicans following the Queen’s visit to Moscow in 1994. We went in. It has an electric organ, and a lady was learning a piece which I did not recognise but which I would guess to be by Edwin Lemare.

KALININGRAD, EAST PRUSSIA and SOME MEMORIES

From the hostel by train to Sheremetyevo airport and thence to Kaliningrad airport from which we were met by a taxi which took us to Lesnoy on the Curonian spit, and the Hotel Mayakovsky. You can see the spit on the map below: the southern half is in Kaliningrad oblast and the northern half is in Lithuania.

The Kaliningrad oblast, is known today as a Russian enclave on the Baltic. Historically it comprises most of the northern half of East Prussia, which was split up at the Potsdam conference in 1945. This northern part was awarded to the USSR, and the rest to Poland. The USSR put the furthest northern part around Memel (now Klaipeda) in the Lithuanian SSR and consequently it is now in Lithuania. I worked in the Kaliningrad oblast for one year from June 2008 to June 2009 in the Sodruzhestvo Soya plant in Svetliy, which is a god-forsaken place on the marshes halfway up the ship canal between Kaliningrad itself and Baltisk on the coast, (think Stanlow), and lived in a western suburb of Kaliningrad. In that time I read quite a lot on the history of the region, including memoirs by some of the last Germans to live there and they are all rather poignant.

The city of Kaliningrad was Königsberg. East Prussia was the first part of Germany to fall to the Red Army as it advanced on its way to Berlin. I have somewhere a newsreel video of the Red Army piling up on the border opposite a town called Schirwindt, the first German town to be taken, and which was utterly obliterated – if you visit it today you can just make out some streets and foundations amongst the wasteland, or try looking at this: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-extinct-town-of-schirwindt

Königsberg itself was mostly destroyed, not by the Russians this time, but by the RAF who dropped over 500 tonnes of bombs on it on the 24^th and 25^th of August 1944. The reasons for the bombing were various, but included that Churchill wished to make a point that his alliance with Stalin stood, that they wished to give a clear road for the advancing Red Army, and lastly to “give the Germans a basting”, but if you read the books on the bombing the effects were horrendous with large numbers of the population being incinerated in their own cellars. What was left was then destroyed during the three month Battle of Königsberg from January to April 1945 during and which many of the residents tried to escape to Pillau (Baltisk), and after which all remaining residents were expelled. The story is particularly tragic. One principal villain in the story was Gaulleiter Erich Koch, a particularly unpleasant individual, who had been Reichskommissar in Ukraine from 1941 to 1944 and who left the city in advance of the Red Army, and made a great show of directing its defence from Pillau before getting out on one of the last ships to sail from there to Germany, and leaving his people to the Red Army. Following the end of the war, the Kaliningrad oblast was slowly colonised by Russians sent there from various towns. These lived alongside the remaining German residents until about 1948-1950 when a programme of forced expulsions took place with the very last Germans being expelled in the early 1950s. This makes it one of the most successful examples of ethnic cleansing anywhere. When I worked in Kaliningrad, I used to go to the new German Lutheran church, and there were a very small number of Germans there but they were either from other ex Soviet German communities or maybe related to those sent to labour camps before 1950. They had nothing to do with the original population of the area. Occasionally though a group of old Germans would turn up who had come to visit where they used to live, and very sad these occasions were.

Our hotel, the Hotel Mayakovsky was some way from the city, being at Lesnoy (formerly Sarkau) on the Curonian spit, a narrow spit of forested land which runs from the north west point of the Kaliningrad Peninsula right up into Lithuania. The Russian part of it is about 30 miles long, It is forested all the way up with sand dunes and sea on the Baltic side and a wide fresh water lagoon on the land side. Neither of us were in good health by now, Richard with some kind of food poisoning, and I with a never ending cough which may well have been bronchitis, so we had a day doing very little, a short walk on the beach, a visit to the National Park visitor centre (me) and watching the other groups unravel. The Argies got out of gaol free (disappointing), Croatia steamed on (expected), Brazil and Switzerland got through (expected) but oh, glory be, the Group F matches and watching the krauts finally failing to live up to Lineker’s dictum. We had decided not to watch the first halves of either South Korea v Germany or Mexico v Sweden on the grounds of time- efficiency. This runs as follows: most goals tend to get scored in the second half, most of the excitement is in the second half, and if we are wrong and one team is 5-0 up at half time, well, the game is over and not worth watching any more, so we spent the first half in the jacuzzi outside in the hotel’s lovely garden and occasionally logged on to the BBC’s and the Telegraph’s blow by blow accounts. We then went for dinner and to watch the second half of South Korea v Germany.

Well we were right. I don’t remember any team exiting the competition with such style and panache as South Korea did They were already out but what a show in sending the krauts home for the first time since who knows when! Richard also came up with a statistic that this would be the first World Cup since 1966 in which England had advanced further than Germany. Our moment of schadenfreude was repeated at our match the next day with another first – the first time I have ever heard our fans sing something in another language: I am referring to the “Auf Wiedersehen” chant.

The next day, a bus to Zelenogradsk at the southern end of the spit, suburban train to Kaliningrad, and a brief walk round the city, stopping off at the former suburb of Amelianstadt, Ulitsa Engels number 3 where I had lived while I was working there. I tried to look up my neighbour, Yuri Vasenin, who lived on the floor above, but he was out. He would be about 70 years old now but he was a former footballer and still works as a trainer for the local side Baltika Kaliningrad. He played for Rostov on Don Army Club and Dynamo Voroshilovgrad who were soviet champions in 1972. He was capped 9 times for the USSR in 1972 and 1973 including a friendly match against England, and had played in the qualifiers for the 1974 world cup. These were of interest for a political incident. The USSR advanced to an inter-confederation play-off stage which was against Chile. This coincided with the coupe in Chile which ousted the communist President Allende, and replaced him with military rule under the less than communist Auguste Pinochet and the execution of some communists in the Santiago Stadium. When the USSR refused to play the second leg in Chile in these circumstances, Chile was awarded a 2-0 victory, and went through to qualify. However there was a bizarre twist to the 2-0 victory in that the match did actually go ahead, with 11 Chilean players facing an empty half, in front of a full stadium and the captain walking the ball into an empty net.

I left my regards to Mr Vasenin with a neighbour and walked briefly round the rest of the town, visiting the cathedral, which sits on Kant Island and is surrounded by greenery. Here is another poignant moment in that this was the centre of old Königsberg. Where there is now a park was once streets, shops, tramlines and houses. Occasional placards have been set up to show where these streets were, with their names and pictures of how they appeared. Kant’s grave though is undisturbed and lies behind the cathedral. The cathedral today operates not as a church but as a concert hall, with a very fine organ by Schuker which I had heard when I worked here.

A story about Soviet planning

One of the buildings to have survived the RAF bombing in 1944 was the old castle of Königsberg, which stood near the cathedral. This was, however, demolished by the Russians in the 1960s as it was deemed to be “bourgeois” and too blatant a memory of the city’s past. In its place was to be built the House of the Soviets, a great example of people’s architecture, at least in their opinion, but in mine one of the most revolting specimens anywhere in the former USSR. Unfortunately, when they built this edifice, they did not realise that there existed a network of secret tunnels between the castle and the cathedral dating back to medieval times, and the new building collapsed into the tunnels. Although it was completed, it was deemed unsafe and has remained empty to this day. I show a picture of Brezhnev’s folly below. It stood just by the Fan Fest.

“All power to the Soviets!” The empty House of the Soviets in Kaliningrad

On to the stadium, past an enormous synagogue currently under construction, and similar to the one destroyed during krystall nacht. The Kaliningrad Stadium is on a larger island, behind all of this, and is one of the smaller new stadia, at 35,000. Personally I think this is something of a white elephant. Baltika play in the lower levels of Russian football, and I never watched them when was there. All I remember is that they used to flood their old stadium during the winter break and turn it into an ice rink.

The game was disappointing. We made 8 changes to their 9. Southgate was in a bit of a position where he couldn’t win. If he had risked players and they had got injured, then what. But we had chance after chance headed wide. As Rashford lined up to take his free kick I said to Richard “he’s going to blast it over the bar, he’s going to blast it over the bar” and what did he do? He blasted it over the bar: I’m always right you know. So for me this shows how reliant we are on Kane, Lingard and Stones as the rest of them can’t score for toffee. Vardy wasn’t so much on fire as a burnt out candle. The only positive was Danny Rose who played his attacking defender role well.

So that is the group stages. We are second and play Colombia. I would rather be first and have Japan. The silver lining is that logistically things will be simpler. If we had come first our route would have been Rostov-Kazan-St Petersburg-Moscow. Now, it is Moscow-Samara-Moscow-Moscow – assuming of course that we can beat Colombia, a big assumption, though the journalist in the Telegraph who watched them beat Senegal did note that Senegal controlled much of the match and that Colombia were not unbeatable. Let’s hope so.

PART THREE – THE SECOND ROUND

ALL THE OTHER MATCHES

One thing about our group, which I have never experienced at other tournaments, is that we are always the last match of each stage, and there is quite a lot of time to fill in in between games. The day after the Belgium match, the 29^th, was timetabled as a rest day, meaning absolutely no football. Richard went off in the morning, (back to Dubai again), while for my no-football day, I hired a bicycle and rode some 20 miles up the Curonian spit in the direction of the Lithuanian border to the village of Rybachy (in Prussian times Rostitten) which is the largest of the three villages on the spit and is at its widest point.

As regards the buildings, this village is largely preserved in its pre-Russian state, including the house of Professor Tinnemann, a local naturalist who seems to be highly regarded by the Russians, and the small 19^th century church which was restored in 2000-2002. A placard nearby acknowledges the help in financing of the restoration from the “former residents of Rostitten”, in return for which the current residents had restored the villages old or “German” cemetery and had erected a commemorative cross at its entrance. The church now operates as the Orthodox Church of St Nicholas, so is one of those which appears to be Prussian and Lutheran on the outside, but which has an Orthodox iconostasis and furnishings inside. The main business of the village, other than tourism, – which is limited to one or two cafes – is fish smoking. I had seen a detail of this in the visitors’ centre which I had visited a few days before, but had not realised that the Russians had taken over the tradition. With a fresh water lagoon on one side, and sea on the other, the location offers a wide variety of fish to smoke. In the Prussian times, fishermen had set out on the shallow lagoon in flat bottomed boats with a single sail, not unlike our Norfolk wherries. While producing these kind of boats does not seem to have been taken over, the smoking of fish, as a cottage industry, has been. There was a more touristy looking “Fischhoff” cafe, but I opted for a roadside hut by the bus stop, which offered smoked mackerel, flounder and skate from the sea or pike-perch and eel from the lagoon. I opted for a skate with plenty of roe and mackerel, with a pint of very drinkable Ponart red beer from the Kaliningrad brewery, All very fresh and a bargain at 620 roubles (about £8).

I don’t know what the oil content of what I ate was, but I felt stuffed for the rest of the day. The day was very windy despite he shelter from the trees, cool but with bright sun and at one point on the way back I dragged the bike through the forest to the seaward side with the idea of sitting on the beach. Not possible. The winds were very strong driving sand almost horizontally, and huge waves were crashing on to the shore, all in spite of the sun and largely clear skies.

We had had an unpleasant experience after the match on Thursday with the taxi. Having ordered one from Zelenograd to take us back after the match and agreed on a price of 1400 RUR, and a place to meet, on meeting, the driver had said he had come in a minibus instead and we should wait for 4 other passengers. While that was not a problem, he then said he wanted 1400 for each of us and not for the two as agreed and when I remonstrated said I could take another taxi (local ones nearby asked for 3500 so not worth it). I launched into a tirade about how unprofessional and unreliable he was, and that one orders a taxi and pays for the taxi not by the passenger. When he started pretending not to understand, I switched to the “ti” form of address and told him he understood perfectly well what I was saying. At some point on the journey back he relented as he first offered to take us on a detour to see a monument and, on leaving, offered to reduce the price from 1400 as it was “his fault and he had made a mistake”. What to do, take a free ride or pay? I told him I had agreed 1400 and it would be no more, no less, but did make a point of telling the reception and asking for our future taxis would be from another company. I expect they were not, and were just other drivers from the same company, but at least I did not have to see him again. A pity as one notable thing about Kaliningrad had been the lack of overcharging we had had in Volgograd and Nizhny. I commented on this later to the waiter who had also been to the match, and he said they had received instructions from the local authority, with a set of co-efficients as to what they could charge. In fact the rates we paid for the room were less than the high season (i.e. school holiday) rates. Co-efficients are amusing. The Russians love co-efficients. Official prices always increase in line with co-efficients (that is why you sometimes see odd unrounded prices or taxes with kopecks in them) and the railways apply coefficients to their basic fares to increase in peak periods and decrease at off peak times

Our companions in the minibus, which the driver had told me were “Japanese fans” were in fact a group of four Chinese from Shanghai, who were touring the World Cup, with “follow my team” tickets for Belgium. With these tickets, you follow your designated team, until they get knocked out, and then you follow the team who beat them, up to the round applicable to the type of ticket. They had “5” which I think means as far as the quarter final. I asked them why Belgium. They said as it was much easier to get tickets for Belgium than other countries. Odd as there were quite a lot of Belgian fans at the match. So my question – in what language do they sing their national anthem, French or Flemish? No I couldn’t hear them singing either.

A fine example of Hutber’s Law has emerged with our ticketing. We obtain our tickets out of the allocation for the suporters of each side playing – a meagre 5% of the total – via the England Supporters’ Travel Club. In the past, for the knockout stages, this has meant receiving vouchers which are exchanged for tickets if we reach the relevant stage. In the past the exchange was organised by the ESTC (or “Englanfans” as it was called then) at temporary offices which they would open at the match location, and we all had to collect them in person. I remember once a note in the fanzine “no, you idle sod, you can’t get one of your mates to get it, go yourself”. This was thus very controlled: only those with the vouchers could get the tickets, you had to show photo ID and to be in the ESTC means submitting to a police check including offences anywhere in the world, including non-football offences, including even driving offences. It is for this reason by the way that I get irritated by people making glib uninformed remarks about “English Hooligans”, because it is impossible for any of them to obtain tickets by this route.

Well not this time. The loopholes are many. One can obtain a ticket for any match via FIFA, and use that to get a FAN ID (this is a document issued by the Russian authorities to allow us to enter without a visa – the Russian name for it is “Fan’s Passport” and you have to wear it at all times). Once in Russia, one can either obtain a ticket on the internet, for a less popular match often at face value or buy from an old fashioned tout. Added to that, this time, the tickets for the knockout stages are not controlled by the ESTC but by FIFA. FIFA do not operate a voucher system so there are no vouchers. Instead, they require the person who bought the tickets to go to one of their ticket centres to collect. In the event of a group then the group leader collects the tickets for the whole group, not individually as we always had to do, and has to present the credit card used for the original purchase (no I don’t know either what you do if it has expired in the meantime). So Richard found out at Domododevo when he went to collect his own ticket and found himself as group leader also collecting mine. For me to collect mine myself, they said, would require a Power of Attorney from him – which you can’t do in two hours in an airport. So what it meant was that he flew off to Dubai with my ticket. Hutber’s Law indeed. If you don’t know what that is, look it up – it appears again in modern life. Don’t forget, “Modern Life is sh*t organised by b*stards”.

Taxi to the airport and flight to Moscow Vnukovo airport with Utair, supposedly a cheap airline. The flight was packed full of police flying back to Moscow. I would expect these were the Russian equivalent of Specials as a lot of the young ones did not look like hardened coppers, and some of the girls were quite something. In fact only five passengers were not police, being myself and four Germans, and we were all upgraded to business class. Well, I have not been on a flight like that for at least 15 years, with nice hot smoked salmon, plates, cutlery, and a nice stewardess called Olga making a big fuss over me, asking me whether I wanted red or white and filling up my glass every now and then with an Italian white wine until I had drunk the whole bottle. So, fly with the Russian police and you get a free bottle of wine. The four Germans were from Jena in the former East Germany and were supporters of the Karl Zeiss team. Sorry, I couldn’t resist it: “we don’t have a word in English for schadenfreude, so we have borrowed yours” I told them. They knew what I meant. Auf Wiedersehen.

We arrived at Vnukovo in the middle of a huge downpour. Moscow was sticky and unpleasant. Aeroexpress to Kievskaya station, metro to Paveletskaya station, a steamy, sticky hell where I dumped everything in a left luggage locker and went off to a Georgian cafe to watch France put the Argies out. Well it isn’t every day I support the frogs. Allez les grenouilles! France have been interesting in this tournament, unspectacular but steady, and without the usual histrionics that accompany “Les Miserables”. The star of this match according to the reports was Mbappe, but personally I saw a good overall team effort from all of them. The Argies were up to their usual tricks. As our song goes (to the tune of the Big Ben chimes):

Same old Argies

Always cheating

Same old Argies

Always cheating

Mascherano apparently has committed the most fouls of any player in the tournament and I don’t like that Di Maria either. Very nice to see them go and to be able to put two fingers up to Maradonna. They can put him back in the cupboard now till the next World Cup and send the rest of their animals back to the zoo.

Overnight train from Paveletskaya to Voronezh, which meant that I missed Uruguay sending Ronaldo & Co back to Portugal. Well one can’t have everything.

Sunday morning in Voronezh meant the chance to revisit the Pokrovsky Church (not Transfiguration as I wrongly said earlier – Transfiguration is Preobrazhennskaya, Pokrovsky is a something peculiarly Orthodox). This church dates from the 16^th century, survived the war and is perhaps one of the most historic churches in Russia, The service is broadcast via amplifiers into the neighbouring open square, so on a Sunday morning the tones of the choir and intonations of the priests boom around the square and neighbouring streets, a magnificent sound. Well if the imams can amplify their wailings and catterwaulings round so many towns in the middle east why can the Orthodox not do the same in Russia?

It appeared to be a festival of some kind, though counting back 13 days to get our equivalent gave me 18^th June, which is not a festival day, so I can’t say what the festival was. The church was packed, women outnumbering men by about 8 to 1 this time. Here the congregation don’t just join in the creed and Lord’s Prayer but also with the “Lord have mercies” in the various Litanies, with one of the priests conducting them. Over and over again we had “gospodin pamiloy, gospodee pa-mee-loy, go-spodi-pa-mee-loy nas”. There, I have learnt the chant and may use it again some day. I had arrived during the gospel again. This is easy to recognise as the priest intones it, rising by a semitone at particular points and then ending with a flourish, making even the dullest parts highly dramatic. A quite magnificent moment was when what I would take to be the equivalent of a bishop (metropolitan?) came out with a crown on his head and two crossed tall candles in each hand to bless everyone. I never understand the bit where all the priests disappear behind the iconostasis, draw the curtains and turn the lights off. Is this the end of the service? It is certainly a signal for everyone to start walking around. A queue formed on the left to kiss the feet of an image of Christ on the cross, one on the right to kiss an icon and one just behind me to pray in front of another icon I always feel very awkward with all this crossing and kissing: it is all very un-English. The choir meanwhile, who were located high up to the left under the cupola sang a string of anthems, rather late 19^th century and occasionally almost English in style. After about three of these, a priest came out, took up a microphone in the middle of the dais and preached a sermon. This is interesting as the orthodox liturgy does not have a place for a sermon, so sermons tend to be sporadic, either before or after services, if at all. He had the effect though of everyone drawing round to listen. I did not follow much – it seemed to be about prayer and a particular Russian writer, Andrey something. Maybe this is what they do in between services, but the impression is of everything being continuous

Back to the flat for the day’s matches. The Russia – Spain result has done wonders for the “feel-good” factor in Russia and has set the tournament alight locally. I was amused to see Medvedev sitting with the King of Spain rather than Putin. Obviously they did not expect Russia to win either. Medvedev always did tend to get all the things Putin doesn’t want to do. When I was working in Russia, Medvedev may have been President, but there was no doubting who was really in control. I remember one day when the news started with what Medvedev had done that day – he had met with the President of Finland and attended some folk dancing events – and then Putin, supposedly only Prime Minister then – he had met with the Black Sea fleet, defence ministry etc. Well, this time, he got the best of it. Spain had perfect match statistics: 74% possession, twice as many passes as Russia and 90% accuracy rate in passing. But Russia packed their defence and Spain played just like England do against a packed defence, left to right, right to left and no way through. Even their goal was not scored by them but was an own goal (though I think if it had not gone in, they would have had a penalty). Once it went to penalties, I knew Russia would do it as Akinfeyev is a much superior goalkeeper. When I worked in Voronezh, he was in the CSKA team that won the UEFA cup, and he was playing for Russia even then. Interestingly after the match some clips emerged from training sessions showing that he had practised saving with his feet in the way he saved the last penalty, so that flick of the foot to deny the last penalty was actually a practised move, not a fluke.

What an anti climax to follow. I would have liked Denmark to win, but really Kaspar Schmeichel is even more irritating than his father was, and his gamesmanship was dreadful. Yes, he saved Luka Modric’s kick, but he moved way before it was taken and he got away with it. In the event Subacic saved one more than he did in the shoot out, so there was poetic justice of a kind. Then, the next day, Mexico v Brazil went as expected, as Brazil are finally waking up, and as for Japan v Belgium, what a second half!

So I write these lines, sitting on a swish, brand new double-decker sit up express train which does the journey from Voronezh to Moscow in a mere 6 hours, comparing with 11 on the night train. We play Colombia this evening, and most of us seem pessimistic about our chances. I have seen over 100 matches with England now including 6 tournaments and out of all of them, only one was a tournament knockout victory, a scrappy 1-0 win against Ecuador in Stuttgart in 2006, thanks to a Beckham free kick. Richard, who goes back further, has seen a second, against Denmark in Japan in 2002. Before we started this time, I said I would be happy with the quarters as it would mean at last seeing another knockout victory, and Southgate mentioned this to be his objective as well. The traumas of the Iceland match are still not gone, and we all know there is no limit to which England cannot screw things up. We saw aganst Belgium that Vardy & Co can’t score, and so we are heavily reliant on Harry Kane, Lingard when he can get one on target, and Stones, if he has a head free. The rest of them just head wide. If Colombia get an early goal and then pack the defence that will be it, so we have to score first or 1-1 and out on penalties as usual. I am quite dreading this one, sure that:

England’s going to throw it away, going to blow it away

When I know they can play……..

ENGLAND V COLUMBIA

As you may have seen, I was almost right. Colombia were nowhere near as good as we had been led to believe, and we nearly threw it away.

Arrived at Moscow Kazanskaya and metro to Tulshinskaya which is one stop beyond the Spartak Stadium in the far north west of the city and where our flat was. Tulshinskaya itself is a non-descript region bounded by the Moscow canal, over which there is a very attractive bridge at a lock on the east side, and by a main road cutting us off from the stadium to the south. Having met Richard, recovered my much-travelled ticket and gone for beers, we set off on what now seems to be the regular Russian route march before every game. Yes, you can see the stadium, it is on the other side of the main road, but with barriers everywhere and police blocking the underpasses, you are shepherded along a specified route, in this case along the main road to some way past the ground, then across a specified crossing point, past the wonderful gladiator statue at the approach to the ground, then round what turned out to be an anticlockwise circuit of the ground, past the Spartak metro station, up to the gate almost opposite the point at which we had started. Leaving we had another route match, continuing the circuit but then up some way past the gladiator before being allowed across the main road to turn back. Nice they are keeping us all so well exercised.

We were way outnumbered by Colombians. The Colombians are another nation of slow walkers, so we had to overtake many in the above route march, and there were really not many of us. Once inside the ground, we found that most of our own supporters were dispersed in small pockets of white and red amid a huge noisy sea of yellow. Our pocket was high up, right up at the back at the top in one corner (top right if you were watching on television). This was the first match ever where I have actually appreciated the band. They were placed in the sector below and to our left, and had the effect of bringing our different pockets together so at least we could sing together. We were often drowned out by the Colombians who jigged up and down and twirled their scarves, and who belted out their national anthem at a huge volume.

As for the game, Colombia were not as good as we had been left to believe. We controlled the first half alost entirely, but chance after chance went again, just like against Belgium: headed wide, headed wide, over the bar, at the goalkeeper. Then we got the penalty after one of their players rugby tackled Harry Kane, and another 4 minutes of pandemonium and whingeing ensued, just like it did against Panama, with the referee again losing control. A penalty is a penalty – why do they not book them for dissent? If any of our players dissented they would get booked straight away. After Kane’s goal, the Colombian team lost it till about the 80^th minute. One of their players, Bacca, headbutted Jordan Henderson, and only got a yellow card, Henderson himself got the same for a slight retaliation later on, and Colombia got a total of 6 cards as the referee lost control. Then from the 80^th minute Colombia started to play well, and we started to sit back. I think bringing Dier on for Alli, who admittedly was injured, was evidence that we were playing for 1-0 and of course it backfired when, following a great save by Pickford, Colombia scored in the famous 94^th minute from a corner and we went into extra time. Next, in the first half of extra time, England were terrible, and sat back as if they were wiped out, but in the second half they came to life again, before we went to penalties.

Before we look at the shoot out, here is a recap of England’s record in penalties, some way the worst in the world, and you will see why I dread them. We went out on penalties in 1990 (Turin), 1996 (Wembley), 1998 (St Etienne), 2004 (Lisbon), 2006 (Gelsenkirchen) and 2012 (Kiev). Since the shoot out were introduced, we had only ever won one, which was against Spain in 1996. And so it would appear here to be going the same way as Henderson’s penalty was well saved by Ospina and we went one down and yours truly sat down. Yes, it is living on the knife edge when three kicks later we were jumping up and down celebrating:

If you can meet with triumph and disaster

And treat those two imposters just the same…..

….then you can’t be an England fan. I can confess to breaking down for a few seconds: I had seen another knockout victory after 12 years, and more to the point, we had won a penalty shoot out – we never win penalty shoot outs. Had the Colombian number 15 not tried to blast his kick something a la Beckham in 2004, then we would be moping and ordering a government enquiry. On such a fine difference rests the result, as the Russians themselves had seen several days before. Instead of a government enquiry, we stayed inside the ground for well over half an hour after the Colombians and neutrals had all left, gathered round near where the band was, and sang and made so much noise that some of the team members came out to join in and to film us on their mobiles.

As Richard noted to his daughters, “the good news is that England won. The bad news is that Daddy isn’t coming home”. So we are off to Samara.

PART FOUR – THE QUARTER FINALS

BUILD-UP

Apparently Eric Dier’s penalty attracted the largest television audience, at 24 million, for a single event in the UK since the closing of the London Olympics in 2012. It wasn’t actually a particularly good penalty, but it went in. We also found out why Vardy had not taken one – he is supposed to be a penalty taker. He was injured in one of the tassles with the Columbians, and Southgate has a policy of moving anyone with the slightest injury down the list. Stones went on record as saying that the Colombians were the dirtiest team he had ever played. It is a pity that they felt they had to do this. When they were not fouling, pretending to be injured, or mobbing the referee, for example between the 80^th and 94^th minutes, they showed that they could actually play some good football. It is true that they missed Rodriguez, but Falcao and others are talented players. The match will be remembered though, apart from the penalties, for Bacca head-butting Jordan Henderson, and receiving only a yellow card, and then Henderson also getting a yellow some time later for returning about 10% of the compliment and maybe going down a bit theatrically -, though not quite the full Neymar.

So we have now seen another tournament victory and laid the penalty curse. Another curse laid was the so-called ITV one, in that all of our most ignominious exits have occurred when ITV was broadcasting, not the BBC. For a view of how they reacted, especially Ian Wright, see youtube. The scenes were reminiscent of Gabby Logan in “Mike Basset, England Manager” with papers flying everywhere.

The next day, we went through the drizzle to the FIFA ticketing centre to collect our tickets for the quarter finals. There were a large number of Colombians hanging round the centre trying to sell tickets. I presume they had tickets under the “follow my team” arrangement and were not exactly taken with the idea of travelling to Samara to follow England. An observation by the way on all the yellow shirts. Many of those yellow shirts looked suspiciously new. We had noted this before the match, and even snapped one individual whose yellow shirt still had the price tag on it. My question though – if a return air ticket from Colombia to Moscow is at a minimum $1,500, then tickets and accommodation, and many have come as families, then where do they get the money to pay for all this?

After collecting the tickets, Richard went off to his firm’s Moscow office (ho ho, so as not to lose a day’s holiday, but don’t tell me you wouldn’t all do the same thing), and I took another posh sit-up train back to Voronezh, a journey made the more amusing by a little girl toddler who kept charging up and down the corridor and making nonsense sounds, a future presidential candidate if ever there was.

Two days in Voronezh sorting out more things with the flat. As well as a lot of dust, the tenant had left behind a curious collection of articles, including a crossbow (yes, really) some crossbow bolts, a painting, six pairs of expensive and high quality men’s shoes, a big drum of body-building powder, and a second television set. In cleaning up the flat I had also found a receipt for a Swiss watch (80,000 roubles, about £1,000) and the receipts for the shoes. So he had money to spend on shoes and watches, but not on cleaning the flat. I obtained his number, asked him if he would collect his stuff, and he came round but only wanted the crossbow and the body-building powder. He told me to throw away the shoes. This seemed wasteful so I asked a friend what to do with them and she said to give them to one of the churches, “any one will do: hand them in at the counter where they sell the candles”. So on the second day I returned to Pokrovska. It was 9.30 on a Friday morning and there was a service in progress, also broadcasted over the square as on Sunday. This was much more subdued and contemplative, but still with the choir. Maybe it was a funeral. The lady selling candles was also taking part in the prayers, so I had to wait some time before offering her all the shoes. A very nice, kind lady, she told me to go outside to a black gate where there was a notice about the church’s social department but added that she thought they only took donations on Thursday and Saturday. There was a phone number on the notice and I should ring that. As I was leaving though, another man asked me “what have you got there?”, and I told him “men’s shoes”, and he took them, unlocked a back cupboard door with “bells” written on it, and put them in there. I did check the black gate. The lady was right. They take donations of shoes and clothes and also hand them out to anyone needing them on Thursdays and Sundays between 11 o’ clock and 1 pm. There was also a notice saying that for the time being, they did not need any more clothes.

Next a visit to the tax office to find I owed about 2,500 roubles in unpaid property taxes for 2016, and about 350 in late payment penalties, which I paid.

Thursday night involved meeting with 3 former colleagues from Dara, where I worked between 2004 and 2007. Bunge bought Dara as part of the EFKO package in 2004. They wanted to build a new vegetable oil plant in Voronezh oblast, and on the reckoning that it was simpler to buy the company that owned the land rather than the land itself (so that the legal ownership of the land itself did not change) bought the Grain Company, Dara, and for various reasons – including quite probably the fact that I was not popular with people higher up, can’t think why, – made me CFO of this company and that was how I got banished to Voronezh, at that time on of the most remote locations in Bunge.

EFKO were a lot more worldly-wise than Bunge. One of the problems with Dara was that, as well as the land, and a previous grain trading business, it owned four very run down and effectively bankrupt farms in Voronezh oblast. These comprised three arable farms and one dairy farm, covering some 13000 hectares and including over 500 cows. Bunge were not the slightest bit interested in the farms, as they were not part of their core business, while the farms themselves, which were the legal successors of four previous Soviet collective farms, were desperate for investment, not just in equipment but in decent sowing seeds, fertilisers, everything.

I did though have two wonderful departments there, accounting and business control, and was meeting with three of the accountants, Lyuba, with whom I had kept contact, Luda, now retired, and Mihail, who I had recruited as Chief Accountant following his predecessor leaving with about 10 minutes’ notice and going back to EFKO. This had left me being Chief Accountant of the company for a few weeks, something I am quite proud of as not long after, a law was passed stating that only Russian citizens could be Chief Accountants of Russian companies, so it is something I have done which few other non-Russians have done. They produced some pictures from those times, often ones of us sitting round tables, drinking vodka and eating after work. One of them remarked that they had never had so many of these “prazdniks” as when they were at Dara. I said it was the same for me. Even 8 March, which is supposed to be Women’s Day was just another excuse for the men to sit round a table, eat zakusky and drink vodka. The one I remember the most was 23^rd February, at that time Men’s Day, when we had a four day weekend, and started that with another table.

We had had over 500 cows in Dara. In Russian accounting, the cows are valued at the accumulated value of what they have eaten and are written off over 7 years. They all appeared by name in the Fixed Assets Register. However they should not have the same names as borne by humans, so the names would be something like “Buttercup, Beauty, Rose” and so on. The milking equipment was antiquated, I would say semi-mechanical, and the fat content of the milk very low at 2.9%, so I could joke that the cows gave semi-skimmed milk. I sent some pictures to a dairy farming neighbour in the UK and discussed some of the valuations with him and he said he wouldn’t give £50 for the whole lot.

Next, the value of what they had eaten. Luba reminded me about corn silage. I had forgotten that one. In Russian accounting it is (or was, it may have changed) simpler to carry forward inventory differences and write them off three years later than to write them off when they were found at a physical stock take. There was a lot of rubbish carried forward in Dara’s balance sheet, including a high value for corn silage. When the maize is harvested, and the cobs cut off, then all the rest of the plants are piled up and left to ferment to make corn silage which is then fed to the cows. The corn again was valued at the value of the inputs, but so as to make the maize business profitable, they had allocated a too high proportion of the maize costs to the sileage and carried it forward in the balance sheet to be charged to the cows when they ate it. So the same costs were being moved around the balance sheet from asset to asset (from maize to silage to cows) without ever being written off. Worse, when I decided to go and take a look at this corn silage, and then found that in fact there wasn’t any as it had all been eaten and we had a big inventory difference in the balance sheet, no one wanted to take the responsibility of writing it off and explaining to the tax inspectors why. So we ended up with the usual compromise in writing off in the group reports and keeping a value in the Russian (tax) accounts. Bear this in mind when you remember that two sets of truth can exist in parallel in Russia. Such a pity that Bunge were not the slightest bit interested in this.

We had our dinner in an Urumchi restaurant. I mention this as I had not heard of this nationality before. A note to that lady from the BBC who wanted Russia to “open up to diversity”. Russia is incredibly diverse, it is just diverse in a different way. You have Buddhists in the area near the Mongolian border, Shamans in altai and Siberia, Muslims in Dagestan and Chechnya, Orthodox Christians and Jews everywhere, a huge number of languages and cuisines. It is given that there are not many Africans and Indians, which is what Ms BBC probably has in mind, but there are a far greater variety of other nationalities and cultures. Urumchi was interesting. The waitresses were dressed in brightly coloured green or yellow dresses, long, long-sleeved and up to the neck and the waiters also in colourful costumes. The food (meat and vegetables Urum-style) was quasi-Chinese being strips of beef, and stir-fried style peppers and onions, served on a very hot cast iron dish.

I read there are mind games going on between England and Sweden. The Telegraph produced a scouting report on Sweden, noting that they have a very organised defence and midfield, but are less good at scoring goals. This is perhaps true: I remember the error-strewn match against South Korea and against Switzerland, they did not even score the goal. Next Sven Goran-Eriksson had his say. In the days when he was England manager, he would preface each pre-match interview with the comment “It will be a difficult game”, so often this became a cliché. Of our match against Sweden, he said it would be the most difficult match we had ever played (Brazil 1970 anyone?). Thank you Sven. It is true that, in the post Zlatan Ibramovich, they are probably playing better. Prior to that, Sweden was the Zlatan show. Now they play as a team. For me, Sweden means the 3-2 win in Kiev in 2012, when we came back from being 2-1 down and subsequent celebrations. I could live with a repeat of that. It is true though, that they are a strong side and will be difficult to break down. Let’s hope Rashford starts this time.

I saw the build up to, and the first 20 minutes of, the first quarter final, France v Uruguay, and then had to leave for my train to Samara. This is more something of a marathon, being an 18 hour journey. The train itself goes on to Novosibirsk, a three day journey, so 18 hours is but a fraction of that. This is a dirty old train, and I have the top bunk and so far, the compartment to myself. I will miss the rest of this match and also Belgium v Brazil, there being no connections of any kind on the train. We are just pulling into the junction at Gryazi-Voronezhski, (muddy Voronezhski) where, three weeks ago now, I changed for Volgograd, so with that, I will sign off for now.

SAMARA – ENGLAND v SWEDEN

A chap called Sergey joined me at Gryazi-Voronezhski and we drank beer together. He was a technical manager for a company making metal parts, lived in Samara and was returning from a trip to his company’s plant in Lipetsk, with a change at Gryazi-Voronezhski. By the time we reached the next stop, Tambov, he had invited me to spend the night with his family in Samara and told me how to contact him after the game. By Tambov we had run out of beer and there was none for sale on the train – Russian trains are now supposedly alcohol free, nor was there a restaurant car or buffet despite this being a train running on a three-day journey. At Tambov we stopped for half an hour and I bought beers from a nicely kept lady of about my age, who said it was after 10 pm and she was not supposed to sell them, so wrapped them up in a black plastic bag. Very amusing as I saw more than one other person join the train with similar black plastic bags. I got odd glimpses of the matches on other peoples’ phones. Uruguay had lost 2-0, Belgium v Brazil was now in progress. At Tambov we were also joined by a character who was going to our match and had been to various matches in the World Cup, and also to the matches at Donetsk in the Euros in 2012 at which point conversation switched to politics, Ukraine, etc, and I backed out of it by saying it was time to sleep. Another advantage of taking a top bunk.

We arrived at Samara at 1 pm the next day, and Richard was already there, having confused Moscow time with local time (Samara is one hour ahead) and having had a spare day to see everything that was there. Samara, like all the other towns on the Volga, started life as a fort and was founded in 1586, the same year as Voronezh. A lot of industrial development took place there in the 19^th and mid 20^th centuries in particular in the aerospace industries and in the neighbouring town of Tolyatti where there is the Lada car factory. You may have heard of the Lada Samara. During the Second World War, much production was also moved there from the occupied territories, and Stalin had a reserve plan to make Samara the capital of the USSR should Moscow fall. One of the historic sights of the town is Stalin’s bunker, and Richard had seen it. I didn’t have time. He had additionally been to the beach on the Volga (I had seen this from the train) and the Fan Fest, which is immense, and holds 20,000 people, and where he had seen France eliminate Uruguay, before going to the Hilton hotel to watch Belgium put Brazil out of the cup.

So folks, that is all the cheats sent home. No more fake injuries and theatricals from the likes of Neymar and Suarez. No more mobbing the referee from Panama and Colombia. We are down to 6 clubs, all of them European. So much for Latin American football.

There was just time to call at Richard’s hostel, have lunch and then take a rattling, jolting ride on a tramline out to the stadium. This was an hour or so in the tram and then another 20 minutes’ walk, all rather reminiscent of Nice. The stadium is a long way out of the town, built in a forest on the town’s edge. Another potential white elephant. Supposedly the local club, Krylia Sovietov, which has just returned to the Russian Premier League, will use it, and their average gate is 10-15,000. Whether they will enjoy this long ride out every week though will be a test of their fans’ loyalty.

Our match was quite something though. We outclassed the Swedes. They were playing what Mike Basset called “four, four, fookin, two”, which is how England used to play. Yes they were well organised. Southgate persisted with Sterling rather than Rashford, but our midfield were very good, Henderson and MacGuire particularly. We scored one in the first half. In the second half they had at least four good counter attacks, and were rescued by Jordan Pickford who made at least four world class saves, and got himself the man of the match award. I got drenched in beer when the second goal went in. This was by Dele Alli and will do wonders for his confidence. We held out against the counter attacks, and stayed behind for at least 45 minutes after the game, singing over and over again. Various TV crews infiltrated our end, and I ended up on Chilean television who asked what I thought. I said “We have waited a long time for this”. “Yes, 28 years” said the interviewer. He asked me “Russia or Croatia?” I answered “Croatia”, remembering our qualifier against Russia at the Luzhniki in 2007, one of the most hostile environments I can remember.

“On our way, on our way……”

RUSSIA v CROATIA

For the sake of the tournament, a Russia v England semi would have been better. I rang Sergey, and he told me to get a bus to the Fan Fest and look for Krasnyarmeyska 34. Easier said than done. We took one of the free shuttle buses which, after jolting through the traffic for an hour, did disgorge us near the Fan Fest but on the wrong other side. So we had a long walk up one street, packed full of people – why aren’t they watching the game? The Russia match had by then kicked off. The Fan Fest was in fact closed as it was full – so 20,000 people already in there – and we had to push and weave through several crowds before Richard found his tram (he had decided to watch the game in the Hilton) and I found number 34, which was a cafe with a television outside, and a mob of people round it. Sergey was inside with his wife, Ganya, and a small boy, Eden, who I took to be their son, but who was actually the son of a friend and from Israel – though speaking Russian and supporting Russia and with his face painted with an England flag. After 10 minutes, Russia scored and absolute pandemonium broke out. Great atmosphere but no beer, as they had already sold out. The second half was low key as Russia seemed to be playing for penalties. Then, in extra time, Croatia scored. Russia started throwing everything at them, and Fernandes scored 10 minutes from the end. Pandemonium again. Ross-iy-a, Ross-iy-a belted out and A-kin-fey-ev, A-kin-fey-ev. Unfortunately for them, their penalty shoot out was a mess. Smolov, who took the first Russian penalty, walked up to the ball as if he was kicking a beach ball, and Subasic, read it and saved it. That put them behind. Then Akinfeyev did save one. But Fernandes’ penalty was also awful, and went wide, somewhere between second and third slip and the Croatians just had to bang the rest of them in. The chants A-kin-fey-ev, A-kin-fey-ev went on to the end, but he did not save any more and Russia were out. So we face Croatia on Wednesday, and Subasic looked as if he had carried on with a pulled hamstring.

Everyone was a bit deflated as we walked to the car and drove back to Sergey’s house. Having said that, the Russians were good losers, and everyone I have met since has congratulated us on out victory and said that they hope we thump the Croatians. His house was some way out, over the Samara river, and was a nice large private house. We drank more beer, and his wife gave us blinis rolled up with caviar inside, some grilled salmon and cherries. We slept for two and a half hours, and then she woke me up at 4.30, gave me a breakfast of tea and more pancakes, made up a packet of cheese sandwiches, yoghurt and some chocolates for the journey and drove me to the station. I put all of this in as it is just one example of what must have been many acts of kindness to many of or fans, in contrast to all the warnings we had had from the press about hooligans, unfriendly locals, oh, and the one that there were cossacks with whips who were going to control England supporters. She was interested in whether reports of Russia in our press were positive or negative, so I mentioned the current war between our supporters and the press and why.

Ganya has a four year old daughter who was away with babushka at that time, so they were free to watch the football. I asked if she would go back and get some sleep. She said no as her shift at work started in an hour and a half. She worked in Transneft, which is a company operating the oil and gas pipeline network in Russia and she is responsible for managing flows in a large part of the country.

Back to the train to find in my compartment the same political chatterbox who was in my compartment on the way to Samara, a couple also travelling to Tambov, and a few other people I recognised from the outward journey. It was now 6 am so time for some sleep. This journey being during the day though, I got to see some of the places I had missed on the way out, which had been during the night. We had several long stops: 55 minutes at Penza, where I went out of the station and found a shopping centre where I could top up, Rtishevo, a small town and junction where we had 37 minutes, time to walk out of the station to inspect a bust of Lenin at the end of an overgrown park, Tambov again, where my companions all left the train, and where there was time to walk out and take photographs by the fountains, Michurinsk, where we had 55 minutes, and Gryazi-Voronezhski yet again, 27 minutes. I like these long stops as they break up the journey.

I received a barrage of texts from Richard on the journey. At long last he seems to be learning the art of taking things as they come rather than planning every last move in detail to the minute nine months in advance: you can’t do that in Russia, eveything is off the hoof and last moment – as in Nizhny, the tram extension to the stadium was only completed the week before the tournament and you could still see the squares in the turf that had been laid down. He had gone for breakfast at the Hilton. It was a buffet but he said there was absolutely nobody there so he was unable to pay and got a free meal of three bowls of porridge, a yoghurt and two coffees. He’s trying to put back on the half a stone he lost while he had the runs.

Arrriving at Voronezh at 1 am, I stopped in the station house for half an hour as it had wifi, unlike the train, and I read some of the match reports and comments. What is it with people in the UK? There were so many negative comments. Apparently we hadn’t played a proper team yet, were lucky against Colombia and rubbish against Belgium, – plenty of comments about our 8 changes but none about their 9 – Sterling could not play football, Kane is just lucky, Henderson dives and cheats, and many of them hoping we get thumped by Croatia. Are they all Scots? All in contrast to the many positive conversations I had had on the journey, particularly at the long stops, with Russians who had been to our match – all hoping that we beat Croatia for them, and many saying how impressed they were with Sterling, and putting Harry Kane up there with Ronaldo and the other stars. Oh, and two lads who had snapped our celebrations at the end on their phones and who wanted me to teach them the song:

To Moscow, on our way…….

PART FIVE – THE SEMI FINALS

BUILD-UP and Russia v Ukraine

We had waited twelve years for a tournament victory, and now two have come along at once. One by one, Southgate has been laying the ghosts of twenty years of England under performing at tournaments: the knockout victory (first since 2006), penalty save (first since 1998) and shootout victory (first since 1996) in the match against Colombia, now with Sweden a knockout victory against a country in the top 20 in the rankings (first since 1990) and the first progression to a tournament semi-final since the one against Germany in 1990, where of course, we went out on penalties. I remember that one well. We watched it in a flat in Budapest, where, if I remember correctly, the commentary in one half was in Hungarian and the other in Russian, and where one colleague got up to pull v-signs at Shilton for not throwing himself around enough, while his wife made a point of supporting Germany. That was the famous match in Turin of Gazza’s tears and another heroic England exit. Penalties were new then. Well, it is Croatia this time, and who knows: we are definitely the fresher side. Croatia looked washed out after Russia had thrown everything at them for 120 minutes, and Subasic looked like he had pulled a hamstring.

Because Russia are now out and because the Croatian coach has caused offence with his “Slava Ukraine” video, many of the locals now seem to be favouring us. The video was fairly mild by comparison with the chants which we get at Ukrainian domestic matches, but that is probably not so well known. As I prefer to keep quiet about living in Ukraine when talking to Russians, I have been spared the endless questions I usually get on visits here. This is a difficult topic to approach. I have friends on both sides of the divide, and being neither Ukrainian nor Russian, this is not my argument, but I have some observations for what they are worth. In “Between the Woods and the Water”, Patrick Leigh-Fermor gives an account of the Hungarian and Romanian stages of his journey, mostly on foot, across Europe from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople in 1934 and 1935 and comments on the post-Trianon animosity in both countries – even down to one of his Hungarian hostesses giving him a pistol to take into Romania, as she was sure he would need it there – and refusing to take sides, as he had friends on both. I have a similar situation here, friends on both sides and even otherwise intelligent ones, who make unintelligent remarks on the problems. On the one hand, the Russian annexation of Crimea was against all international norms, but on the other hand, Ukraine just let them take it without a shot being fired, rolling over with its legs in the air. I can give one small example of this at a lower level: a notice published on our local city website in Dnepropetrovsk in March 2014 informed railway workers in the Crimean sub-directorate of Predneprovsk railways (whose headquarters are in Dnepropetrovsk) that their salaries and taxes would be paid up to 31 March, following which the entire assets, business and staff of the sub-directorate would be “transferred”, i.e. gifted free of charge – to Russian Railways, who would be responsible for them thereafter. No mention that these are “our” stations, trains, lines or even staff, just straight gifting. Effectively, at a higher level, the country did the same thing. More worrying is the war in the East, less than 100 miles from where I live, where a Russian-supported army takes pot shots at the Ukrainian army each day and soldiers on both sides are killed almost every day. I give monthly organ recitals at the Dnepropetrovsk organ hall, and often there are small squads of Ukrainian soldiers in the audience, who the Director lets in for nothing. These are all young boys, and while I sometimes wonder what they make of Bach and Buxtehude, and see that they listen attentively, never make a noise, and sometimes stay to have their pictures taken next to the organ, the thought is always:

“….And there with the rest are the lads who will never grow old”

Of course the wealthy and the politicians obtain exemptions for their own children from doing military service, so it is other people’s boys who they are happy to send to their deaths, and then revere as heavenly heroes or whatever.

Continuing with this topic, Russia’s first offensive was to take Crimea and second the proxy war supporting the unofficial Donetsk and Lugansk republics. The third has been much more subtle. This is the enclosing of the Azov sea thanks to the new bridge which links the Taman peninsula with the Crimea. It is too low to allow through much of the commercial shipping which used to go into the Azov ports of Mariupol and Berdyansk, such that this shipping now has to be diverted now to other ports. Ukraine has been oddly silent on this one. The fourth possible one – and this is the current worry in Ukraine – is that after the World Cup, Russia will cement this encirclement by advancing through Mariupol and Berdyansk to create a land bridge between its border and Crimea. This has been a fear since 2014 but was stopped due to fierce resistance from the Ukrainian army, which has kept Mariupol Ukrainian, although its link to the rest of the country hangs by a thread – for example, it is still linked to the railway system, not via the previous direct route, which ran through Donetsk, but by a tortuous back route of minor lines working round through Volnavaka. A land bridge between Russia and Crimea would mean at some point a new southern land border in Ukraine in Zaporozzhye and Donetsk oblasts, to turn the Azov Sea into a Russian lake, and who knows how or where that border would be set.

The Ukrainian side does not help itself though, and, as ever, many problems are self inflicted, something of a national characteristic from the nation that gave us Sacher-Masoch and masochism. Protests are always in winter, when it is freezing, never in summer, so the world can see how everyone is suffering. The President has pulled back on proposed anti-corruption laws and has not implemented many of the reforms which were promised. Government has stagnated. A crude form of linguistic nationalism has been imposed on non-Ukrainian speakers, which was meant to be an attack on Russian speakers in the east, and yah-boo sucks to Russia, but instead has had the effect of upsetting the Hungarian minority in the west. Indeed, as with some other countries such as Wales, language plays an important role in Ukrainian nationalism such that it is inconceivable to have a multi-language state as in Belgium, Switzerland or even Moldova and Latvia. Rather than concentrate on fundamental problems such as corruption or the economy, we have had crude fripperies, such as the “de-communisation law” which has resulted in obligatory renaming of cities (we are now “Dnipro”, which to me represents either the river of the football team but not the town, Kirovograd is Krapivnitsa which is unfortunate if you are English) and in our case, some 70% of the street names as well. We have had severing of transport links between Ukraine and Russia (no direct flights, no Russian railway trains) and snarling up of mail between the two countries (approximately 40 days hold up in customs). Meanwhile the television stations of both countries have endless panel and audience discussion programmes in which much hot air is generated, much nonsense is spouted, and much emphasis is placed on fripperies and manufactured differences – under which heading I would include the Croatian video – and little to fundamentals.

These panel and audience discussions in Russia expand to take in other current affairs as well. Nothing which happens in the world is ever Russia’s fault and everyone hates them. One of these now is the Amesbury poisonings, which of course were nothing to do with them, almost certainly caused by Porton Down, and they have wheeled out Victoria Skripal again. This woman takes absurdity to a new level. A few days ago they played a recording of another phone call she had had with her cousin Yulia, in which she berated her in a shrill voice, “Just look what you have done to my life, just look what you have done to my life, they are making fun of my son at school”. Well, first, while there are many theories, even the Russians would have to agree than Yulia did not poison herself, so she is innocent on that charge of doing anything to Victoria’s “life”, but secondly, it was Victoria who came forward and meddled in the affair with her heart-rending appeal for her dear cousin to come home. On the same programme they wheeled out her 90 year old grandmother who wants to see her. This is quite typical and is emotional blackmail. No one suggests of course what is bleedin’ obvious, which is that Victoria indulged in some attention seeking of her own accord, and maybe opportunity to maybe earn some money through all these TV appearances.

For the sake of balance, let’s add some more positive experiences of Russia. I had two free days in Voronezh, and met with the Estate Agent. They have put my flat up for sale, but had not had any enquiries. In fact, because of the football, they had not had any enquiries at all on any properties, so not to worry. However, I had made some internal changes to the flat, without obtaining planning permission, and it would make life easier, and remove an opportunity for a buyer to talk the price down, if I could legalise them. So, on Monday, it was off to the Voronezh Central District Administration, where I explained the problem to a secretary in the architect’s office, and she sent me upstairs to another office, saying that I would have to apply for planning permission and would need a “project”. This office receives enquiries on Mondays and Wednesdays 9 am till 1 pm and it was 2.30, but he received me. The deeds to the flat include an internal plan, and in 2006, when I had bought it, I had removed two non-supporting walls, one between a corridor and the main room, to expand the main room, and one between the main room and the kitchen, so it is a big open-plan flat. I should have obtained planning permission and had the internal plan altered. He said that I could make the application as if I was doing it now, and the cost of the “project” and permission would be 15,000 roubles:

“What?” I asked

“Is that too much”?

“You only have to copy the plan and take the walls out, it isn’t that much work. Do you have a discount for cash”?

He wrote down 10,000 on a piece of paper. This is very Russian, you never know who may be listening.

“Will that do”?

I nodded.

He gave me the phone number of a lady called Natalia who would compile the project, the three of us had discussions on the phone, and we agreed I would receive all this and pay for it next Monday, the day after the final

So anything is possible in Russia. You just have to work out how to structure it.

Russian Channel 1 seems to have fallen in love with that boy who stands a few rows behind us during the matches and who has been making a Youtube blog on his journey round Russia. They had about 5 minutes on him saying nice things about them last night. First, a Russian supporter called Maxim had seen his appeal for a semi-final ticket and had bought one for him (category 3s are $300), and he wished to say “Thank You Max”, next there were some shots of him in a kitchen extolling Russian cuisine. He had had borscht, cutlets (these are Russian rissoles), pelmeni and so on. Then some shots of him outside, and finally what looked like some clips lifted from his youtube channel. He may yet do more for Anglo-Russian relations than Boris Johnson ever did, but he should just be careful not to end up as one of the “useful idiots”. Oh, and I must have a word with him about this horrible practice he has as so many of our fans do now, of singing God Save The Queen with their hands raised in the air. I suppose it is still better than the ghastly American-and-everyone-else-now with their silly hand over the heart pose, but one should sing the National Anthem standing to attention and not looking as if one is surrendering to the Germans.

The semi-final between Belgium and France, I thought was one of the best in terms of pure football. The first half was fast-paced and very even, with counter-attacks and saves galore. Then in the second half Umtiti scored a goal that was an almost exact copy of John Stones’ against Panama, France began to take control, and Belgium resorted to physical play including putting Matuidi out. I hate to say this but I have never seen France play so well. It is not a game based round Griezmann, if anything he plays more of a supporting role and does it very well and the ball skills of Mbappe are really quite something. Deschamps appears to have done something to France, in the same way as Southgate has with England: instead of picking players and finding a system, creating a system and then find the players to fit it. So I would not begrudge them putting the Woodentops out.

So, posh sit up train again, Voronezh to Moscow, and tonight we have England’s biggest game since 1990. Richard is bringing his wife, Samantha this time, as our friend Dave is still unable to come and we have a spare ticket. Croatia are strong in midfield, but we have a chance at least, and we owe them a couple for what they did to us in 2007. Here goes.

ENGLAND V CROATIA

So it was not to be and 1990 proved to be a ghost too far, although that did not stop more than a few of our supporters turning up in those old Umbro shirts from 1990 with number 19 (Paul Gascoigne’s number) on the back. The Luzhniki continues to be an unlucky ground for me as well. I had seen England lose 2-1 there in a qualifier to Guus Hiddinck’s Russia in 2007, in what was the most hostile atmosphere I have ever encountered at a football match. That was before the stadium was redeveloped for the World Cup. At that time, there was a running track around the pitch, the stands were much further back and there was the infamous plastic pitch which Hiddinck had watered just before kick of to confuse our players. It was also October and cold.

I disagree with the pundits who put Croatia’s win down to their experience. We lost the match in the first half when we had so many missed chances to score a second goal, that Croatia were set up for the classic “game of two halves” scenario, Everything started well. Kieran Trippier scored in the 6^th minute from a beautifully taken direct free kick, and there was beer everywhere. Glasses were still full at the start of the match, all the hands went up and I was drenched as was everyone else around me. But then we had so many missed chances. In the second half, we lost control of the match, and they equalised. Both sides hit the post. In the first period of extra time we regained control but then in the second period, they scored another, and after that there was very little actual football as the Croatians concocted delays. So if France want to beat them on Sunday, they should do it in the first half.

At the end, there was a wonderful occasion when Southgate and the players came once more to applaud us, and we all stayed on for some time after the end. It was disppointing not to go any further, but one should look at what they have achieved. Two years ago in Nice, I left a football match early for the only time in my life, when it was clear that England were never going to equalise against Iceland. Those fans who remained sang “you’re not fit to wear the shirt” and we had the famous “shambles” diatribe from the Radio 5 live commentator. Then we had the Allardyce affair, which brought in Southgate as a temporary stop-gap – remember he didn’t want the job as he was coaching the Under 21s – an unexciting qualifying campaign, and as late as October last year in Vilnius, I stood through an unbelievably boring match in pouring rain, shivering under one of those green and yellow ponchos which the locals had doled out, to watch England grind out a 1-0 victory against indifferent opposition, and that only thanks to a Kane penalty. Things only started to change in the friendlies between the end of the qualifiers and the World Cup itself, both as regards tactics and players. Now we have quite a wonderful team, where the likes of Macguire, Trippier, and I would add Henderson and Stones have performed well. Even Sterling, although he can’t score goals, can at least assist in build ups.

THIRD PLACE MATCH

A friend of mine, and another regular, Paul Probyn said that as England fans, we should call this match the “Fourth Place Playoff”. It has been called the least loved match in football. The only reason for having it would seem to be the possibility to award a bronze medal, the chance to win a bit more prize money, and for FIFA to generate some revenue. In 1990, it was held in Bari, some 500 miles form Turin and only 100 England supporters turned up to watch us lose 2-1 to Italy. I decided not to go to it. For a start, I didn’t have a ticket. Next, it was in St Petersburg, to which trains are expensive, as is accommodation. So I decided to go to Sochi for a few days and watch it on the Fan Fest screen there. In fact of all the other supporters I know, only one is actually going to it.

A good job I’m not going to Voronezh either as Tom called me on Liam’s phone “Am gooin tyer flat in Voronezh for a few days cos arve nooo mooney till Tuesday”, so he will be there when I return after the final.

SOCHI

I knew pre-Olympic Sochi quite well as, when I was working in Russia, I had a girlfriend from Voronezh who moved there and I had visited her there several times. Sochi itself is a semi-tropical post and seaside resort on the Black Sea, which has become well-known because of the 2014 winter olympics. It was also a host city for the World Cup, using the Fischt Stadium, which was built for the Olympics. Greater Sochi extends down to Adler and The Abkhazian border, to the south and to encpmpass a string of neighbouring resorts to the north. Inland, it extends upwards and upwards till it gets to Krasnaya Polyana, where the ski resort was and Olympic Village is. In January 2009, I went on an excursion up there. While in Sochi itself, the weather was mild, it got colder and colder at each intermediate stop, with the snow starting about halfway up, and minus 10 by the time we got to Krasnaya Polyana. So a series of micro-climates allows winter sports to be held close to a semi-tropical seaside resort. In Sochi itself it rarely snows, though it did in 2009, and I have somewhere a photograph of myself standing under a snow covered palm tree.

Well it may not snow, but it can certainly rain. I had an airbnb flat in the hills between Sochi and Hosta, near Maliy Akhun. I flew to Sochi airport, which is actually in Adler, from Domododevo for a bargain price of £40. From there, I found I could take a bus 105 to Sochi, and there was a stop called Maliy Akhun. Post-Olympic Sochi though is a mass of fast dual carriageways and tunnels. The driver missed my request for the stop and dumped me on the dual carriageway between it and the next stop. I walked along the dual carriageway to where I knew there was a turn off. Then what? I did not have a map, connections or anything else apart from the address so walked along a road which doubled back, called Novorossiske shosse (Novorossiske highway, so presumably the old, pre dual carriageway route to Novorossiske, but the road was empty. A small van was parked by the road. I asked the owner for the address, and he very kindly took me there. In fact, where I wanted was directly above where I was standing, but this was reached via a road which winds and zigzags up from the point where I had doubled back, but starting in the opposite direction. We then turned off at a point where there was a bus stop, some run down shops, and a group of very run down, crumbling, and packed out blocks of flats to go down a track, at the end of which were two brand new blocks in a gated territory. Most of these flats appeared not yet to be occupied. The airbnb ad had described them as “business class” and they were available very cheaply at about 2000 roubles a night. So two business class blocks right next to a group of crumbling ones.

I called the owner. He would be there in 20 minutes. After half an hour I called again. 10 minutes. After another 15, 5 minutes. He eventually turned up exactly an hour after my first call, and apolgised as there was a lot of traffic in Sochi. I remembered that and told him, “there is always a lot of traffic in Sochi”. It was very sticky. We went to the flat and the air conditioning had not been ionstalled yet. He offered another flat in the neighbouring building. We went to that. The air conditioning did work (but not well and was in the wrong rooms: it should be in the bedroom, not in the hallway) but the wifi did not as the subscription had expired, and so another hour went as he paid that and I got a connection. His name was Timur and he had an accent. He told me he was Russian but originally from Tatarstan.

From the road near the flat, the number 2 bus ran to Sochi, so I had one day there, mainly walking around the town and printing out train tickets, and then one day on the beach, to which I found a short cut path through the woods, from where the bus left almost directly downhill, with wooden steps in some places, arriving at exactly the point on Novorossiske shosse where I had met the van driver, and then descending by a small road, under the dual carriageway, to a small public beach. I had an hour there before the rains started. Then it rained, and rained and rained, rains of monsoon proportions. I got up moderately wet through the woods, and then absolutely drenched along the last part of the journey. It rained the third day as well, and this being the day of the “fourth place” match, I watched that on TV in the flat. As I had expected, there were changes to the team, though less than in the first match against Belgium, it had the atmosphere of a friendly, and we lost. I noted that the band and a few of our fans seemed to be there, and regretted a little bit not having gone, as there would have been the opportunity to stay behind again afterwards when the players and Southgate went over to applaud the fans again.

It was still raining very heavily the next day, and I had bought my ticket from Hosta, as that station was nearer Sochi, and had intended to walk it. So I took the number 2 to the dual carriageway and then tried to work out which of the buses going in a southerly direction would go to Hosta station. The answer is that none of them do. Post olympic Sochi has a road bypassing Hosta altogether by going through a tunnel, and I realsised at a point just after the tunnel that we had gone past it, asked the driver to stop, and someone told me that I could double back along a road just joining to the right and go under the bridge and something. So I got off. The rainwater was running in a torrent down the road joining and I ran down it and then went under the bridge. Now what? There was a kiosk selling Khatchapuri, so I bought one and asked the way. In fact I should cross the river and follow the road under the flyover the whole way, so I did this, had cover, and arrived at Hosta station with an hour to wait for the train, and time to dry off a bit.

Hosta to Voronezh was 22 and a half hours. My companions were a young couple with a five year old daughter, Masha. The husband had a connection on his phone, so we watched the first half of the final on it. I saw the first French goal, before the connection went off. When we got it back it was 1-1, and was saw the second goal, the penalty. The railway line follows the Black Sea all the way from Adler, through Sochi and Tuapse, to a junction at Goryachi Kluch (a nice pun, it means “hot spring” but can also be translated as “hot key”). This was where we were at half time, and on leaving here the connection vanished entirely, so we missed the second half, cup and celebrations etc. I don’t begrudge the French their victory. They played attractive football, and I don’t particularly care for the Croatians. I don’t think we would have come anywhere near beating the French if we had made the final: just that it is a pity we didn’t get through and have the chance to see it.

VORONEZH AGAIN and how to manage the bureaucracy

Because of the daughter, the couple switched out the lights soon after Goryachi Klyuch, about 9 pm, and so we slept, for much of the rest of the journey. I then had five days in Voronezh, pursuing the legalising of the flat alterations. It in fact turned out to be a six stage process. On the Monday, I received the project from Natalia, a tall, not unattractive blonde girl, and the permission from the architect’s office. That was stages one and two. Then I had to go to the BTI to get a new “technical passport”, basically a document with the new layout of the flat, as depicted in the project and as covered by the permission. Russians love passports. They have passports for everything. Our FAN Ids were in Russian referred to as “fans’ passports”. The little book with your dog’s vaccination records is a dog passport. Any kind of technical designs can be a technical passport. By the way your “passport” in Russian, is actually your domestic ID papers, and your passport for foreign travel is referred to as your “abroad passport”. They often show surprise when I say we don’t have domestic ones.

As for the BTI, this is the Bureau of Technical Inventories. This used to register ownership of buildings, but now seems to be concerned just with layouts, designs and technical passports. The most interesting thing was where it was – Kutsigina 21, by coincidence, the building where I had worked between 2004 and 2007, a small building set back from the road. We had occupied all of it then and they did now. I remarked on all of this to the nice girl to whom I gave all the documents on the Tuesday morning, and asked if they could do the passport quickly. They could but “urgent” would cost 4000 roubles, which I should pay at Sberbank. I should be back tomorrow at 10.00 to take their “expert” Tatyana Viktorovna to the flat, and I would have to pay for the taxi as all their drivers were on holiday. On Wednesday morning I picked up Tatyana Viktorovna, a middle aged rotund lady with a nice friendly bearing, and took her to the flat. She made various measurements using sensors on her phone, and left. She told me to call her at 10.00 the next day, Thursday, which I did. She said she was “nearly ready”, so I went, arriving at 11.00, at which point it was “10 minutes”, every 15 minutes until I received the plan at noon, after sitting in the room with the nice-girl-whose-name-I-don’t -know. My interview was at 1, so I took a break from all this, and at 3 went back to the architect’s office with the technical plan to get an “act of putting into use”. How long would this take and how much would it cost? I asked. If I wanted a contract it would cost 4600 roubles and be ready next week. Could I have it for tomorrow? Yes, he said, I could go through Natalia again, it would cost 2000 roubles and be ready tomorrow. I said Natalia sounded fine, and the next morning at midday I received a text from the same chap saying it was ready. For stage 5 I took all the papers so far accumulated back to the nice girl at the BTI and made an application for a new technical plan This takes a month, and after getting it, I should go to a multi-functional bureaucracy clearing office called “my documents”, to get them to give me a new revised set of deeds for the flat. This was the same “my documents” that I had been to in Saratov, so I am getting used to this. My estate agent turned out to be on holiday so I was unable to arrange a Power of Attorney for her so am left with the problem of who will do this in a month’s time. Leaving the documents with them and collecting in three months is not an option so I left the application undated and asked her to sit on the documents till I know when I will be coming again, and I will ask a month before that date. I then gave nice-girl-whose-name-I-don’t-know a bottle of Abkhazian wine, thanked her for her work and said I would call when I knew something.

Managing Russian bureaucracy is all about collecting bits of paper, and collecting them in the right order. Once you can do that, you might not solve the Crimean problem or bring the war in Donetsk to an end, but you can do what you want, and when they go “dock-you-meant, dock-you-meant” at you, they can’t touch you. Form over substance environments ever were thus.

And Tom. Oh gosh chiz. He was in the flat when I arrived on the Monday. He had been in there for about three days and had recharged his batteries. “I drank that bottle of Abkhazian wine you had in the fridge”, he told me. “It was expensive” “I’ll pay for it”. “You also drank the football vodka?” “Yes”. And he had used the house phone to call the UK: I will get that damage later, but at least he had the good news that his auntie, thought to be at death’s door, was coming out of hospital. So I bought two small bottles of Voronezh vodka, quite drinkable, and we had them on Monday night. On Tuesday, he had some money, and I managed to extract 800 roubles of him, including 482 for the Abkhazian wine, which I needed to buy another bottle for the ngwnIdk. His plan was to take a bus on Tuesday evening to Belgorod, get a bus to the border, walk across the border and get another bus to Kharkov on the other side. Walking across the border was to avoid the 7 hour delay he had had on the way in, and for which I can vouch as the only time I have ever crossed that border by bus it also took 7 hours. From there he would go by train to Kiev, then Lvov, and had a flight from Lvov to Luton for £35. That would leave him time to visit his beloved Kolomiya in the Carpathians.

Tom is a nice chap in small doses, but small means an hour and a half, and not in the bus where he talks non stop in a loud voice so everyone looks round at us, or at the internet salon where he talks in a loud voice and everyone looks at us and I can’t think about what I am doing. I like to merge into the background and for no one to know I am there. He is the opposite. But he has a knack of chatting up women. How does he do it? What is it? He stinks and talks loudly but they all love him. He put his shoes and socks on the balcony they were so bad – the socks reminded me of Vyvyans’ in the Young Ones, that escaped by themselves. Anyway, on the Tuesday evening I took him to the bus station. We were early so went for a drink, in my case a few glasses of wine and in his a couple of beers and a few vodkas. I then went on somewhere else. And what happened? They had told him he had to buy the ticket on the bus so he had waited for his bus. Four buses arrived and he was told they were not his. Then the lady there told him his bus had in fact left half an hour before. He was furious. I had a feeling something like that would happen and had left a spare key under the mat. So I had him for another night. The next day when I was going to the architect’s office, we took the same bus, my stop was before his, and when I rang him in the afternoon, he was in Belgorod waiting for a bus to the border.

On the Friday night the water went off until Sunday. This happens in Ukraine as well but usually in August, and I had had sufficient warning to fill a bucket (for flushing) fill the kettle, and run the bath. This is called “prophylaktica” and is where the water company cleans the pipes or something. Whatever it is, now offices tend to close but 10 years ago we would work despite the lack of water and by the end of the second day the toilets would be revolting.

One piece of good news filtered through. Apparently Putin was so pleased with the World Cup that all of us with Fan Ids may use them in place of visas to visit Russia again till the end of the year, as he put it “please bring your friends and relatives and get to know our country and our culture”: a very nice gesture, and in my case, useful if I need to come back for anything regarding the flat sale, if only to complete phases 5 and 6 of the bureaucratic tunnel.

LEAVING

On Saturday, I tidied the flat, left all the documents obtained so far in order for the Estate Agent, turned off the electricity and left the flat somewhat sadly. This was the first time I had actually lived in that flat and it was rather nice. It has the best views in Voronezh, a bargain for 5 million roubles if anyone is interested. It also has my best piano. From Voronezh I retraced along that painfully slow train to Kursk, where I now sit, a three hour wait this time, for the train to Dnepropetrovsk, with potential problems at the border, my lack of registrations (Russian side) and heaven only knows what on the Ukrainian side.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Some remarks on the World Cup itself. Everyone always says that the current World Cup is “the best ever World Cup”. This one was superb in terms of football. Russia’s overperforming kept the local interest going, we had some great matches, and seeing the Argies and krauts crash out early was great fun. Russia has been on its best behaviour and everyone has commented on the warmth of the welcome and the excellent organisation of the events. This one was better than South Africa and way better than Brazil. I would put it on the same level as the one in Germany for organisation and for general enthusiasm but better than that in terms of football. That is as far back as I go. Richard can say whether it compares with Japan and France. Looking back on it now, in terms of everything, it will be on a level with Italia 1990, now remembered for Pavarotti and our getting to the semi final. We have seen a variety of cities, each different from each other, from the midges and war memorials of Volgograd, via the heat and the kremlin of Nizhny Novgorod, the detached reality of Kaliningrad, to the metropolis of Moscow, and the industrial city of Samara. Before the World Cup started many journalists referred to it as “Putin’s World Cup”, but in fact, apart from the first day when he made a speech and sat alongside Prince Mohammed Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, he has been absent. Presumably he could watch the first match as Russia were expected to win, but at all subsequent games, where they were not, he sent Medvedev. Or maybe he doesn’t like football. He appeared again at the final but in between, he was nowhere to be seen.

As for England, assuming we qualify – and we have not lost a qualifier since 2009 – most of out matches in Euro 2020 will be in London or Glasgow, so we will effectively be at home, and maybe football really will come home at last. In previous years we have underperformed. Here, our team of young players have way exceeded expectations. They have set pieces worked out very well, and indeed most of our goals have been from set pieces, direct free kicks and corners. People are sneering at this but I remember not so long ago that “we never score from corners”, so that problem has been solved. Where we do not score is from open play. All those headed wide, headed wide, over the bar shots against Belgium returned again against Croatia and allowed them to come back. The passing is very nice but when we counter attack, we slow down and allow the opposition to catch up. Sterling can’t take first time shots, though maybe as Richard keeps saying “one day he will score the most fantastic goal and everyone will forgive him”. In the new Nations’ League, we have Spain and Croatia, so that will be a challenge. The away game against Croatia will be behind closed doors because of an incident where the Croatian groundsman greww a swastika design on the grass or something, a three match ban was placed, and only after the draw, and some 500 of our fans booking places, was it found that only 2 of these matches had been served, The ban was placed by UEFA, and the World Cup is FIFA. The Nations’ League is UEFA. So this has caused a lot of ill feeling amongst our supporters. Advice “not to travel” is meaningless, since the Croatia and Spain away games are back to back, meaning that those going to Croatia for the match on the Saturday will fly from there to Spain directly for the match on the Tuesday. What this means is that there will be some 500 England Fans on the streets of Zagreb when the match goes on behind closed doors. Beyond the injustice of punishing our supporters for the sins of the Croatian groundsman one does wonder what goes through the heads of some of those people in charge. Another reason why I sincerely hope we thump the Croats.

As a final remark let me note an interesting parallel experience. Our friend Dave who usually accompanies us at tournaments and who comes to qualifiers with us, now lives in the US, and was unable to come to Russia as his wife was expecting their third daughter. In what I called a “fantastically mis-timed shot” on his part, not only was Donna pregnant, but also the baby was due on the day of the final. In fact Donna went into labour early, at the very moment England were kicking off for the first match against Tunisia. There were delays etc and she was sent home. Throughout the tournament we had news coming through of more contractions, more hospital visits etc but still no birth and I had a running commentary on all this from Richard. Dave did have conditional tickets for the semi final and final but was still not able to make the semi final. The baby was finally though born on the morning of our last match against Croatia. Looking at it that way, it is Donna’s fault we lost to Croatia as she should have held out till the day of the final. Or looking at it another way, as nice a metaphor as I can imagine for the England campaign as throughout the tournament we saw the birth pangs of a new side, a new kind of football, and so much of the past laid to rest.