Part Four – Miami to Atlanta and the Semi Final

Drawing a line from Miami to Atlanta on the map, it is of course more direct to go by car or by bus. However, it is possible to do it by rail, albeit a convoluted route involving three trains, via Raleigh and Greensboro, both in North Carolina, and having purchased a second USA pass, and having three days to do it, this was my route.

The train left Miami at 11.05 on the Sunday morning. No early services anywhere, so no church for a change. If you start a journey on Amtrack at the station of origin, you should be there at least half an hour before as they do all the boarding early so as to leave on time. So bus 22 all the way up 22^nd avenue and bus 79 along 79^th street (nice numbering system) and a short walk to the single platform Amtrak station, and the “Floridian” which left on time, bound for Chicago.

I initially had an empty seat next to me, but at Tampa (where we were allowed out for a “stretch and smoke”) I returned to find one of those enormous black women with massive bare arms, that no sleeves could ever fit, occupying it. She was pottering around and I asked her to be careful and not sit on my glasses, which were on the seat. She took offence at that and asked for another seat which she got. Phew.

At Orlando an equally enormous man got on while I was on the platform taking the air. This chap was much more affable, a retired cook called John West (“as in the tinned fish?” “Yep”). He talked at a huge rate, and was going all the way to Chicago, which involved two nights on the train. I told him about Atlanta. He said I would fry there: “Stay any longer and you’ll be my colour”. Soon he fell asleep. After some hours I climbed over him carefully so as not to wake him up but when I returned he had woken up and asked how I had done it when he was so big – “Another advantage of being small”.

During the night he offered me a circular pillow type thing that I had always thought looked like a neck warmer. He didn’t want it as he was going to sit in the café car and watch movies. It was very good for supporting the head and I slept very well. My impression was that he spent the whole night in the café car as every time I woke up his seat was empty.

I went to the café car and joined him for what has become my standard Amtrak breakfast – maple porridge with a small carton of milk added to dilute the sweetness, a cup of English Breakfast tea and two cheese and bacon omelette cups. He was surprised that “such a little guy” like me was eating so much. So, he had 8 sisters and 4 brothers. His parents gave them a very strict upbringing. They kept the front room of the house as a “museum”, used for visitors only, and polished up the best china service every week even though it was only ever used at Christmas and Thanksgiving. I said it sounded like my grandmother’s upbringing from her memoirs. He was determined though that no room in hisown house would be a museum. His great love was cigars, and he said he liked to imagine the Day of Judgement coming before God, and he will be smoking a cigar. Wonderful.

When I came to leave, he wanted me to take the head rest. I didn’t want to as I’m sure he is worse off than me, but he said “I’ll be offended if you don’t take it”. So I took it and still have it, and it is a real help. However he had another night to go before Chicago, so I hope St Peter has a cigar for him when the time comes.

From the station at Raleigh by bus to the “Super 8” hotel, where it was too early to check in at 10 a.m. so I left the bags and took another bus back to the “downtown”. None of the cash capturing machines were working and I was waved to the back without paying on each occasion.

Raleigh appeared to be closed on Mondays. Most of the museums, including the City Museum were closed on Mondays. I walked down the main thoroughfare to the Carolina Capitol, took a few pictures and read the memorial to the various local worthies who achieved great things but were also slave owners. Then the Natural History Museum, which was open, and was free, to take up the time till 3 pm when I could check in.

Evening back in by bus again and a salad and cocktails at the Willard Roof Bar, overlooking the city centre.

From Raleigh I had a train, the “Piedmont” from Raleigh to Greensboro. The Piedmont actually runs as far as Charlotte, so between Greensboro and Charlotte, takes the same route as the train from New York to New Orleans, which I had already taken on my first trip to Atlanta. I mention this because of what happened later. I wanted to leave my bag in the left luggage facility so as not to have to lug it around. This cost $20, but I was told that if I checked the bag in, it was free. “Actually I am going to Atlanta”. He said he would check it in to Atlanta and that would avoid having to carry it everywhere. I then went to a nearby restaurant called the Whiskey Kitchen for a long lunch of lambburger, Collard greens and some Carolina Rye whiskeys.

The Piedmont to Greensboro and Charlotte is quite different from the regular Amtrak trains. It is financed by North Carolina State. The coaches have much more space than on the regular trains, and the café car is self-service: free tea and coffee and vending machines for the other items. It also passes through some quite lovely scenery as the train climbs upwards.

There is not a lot to see in Greensboro, so I visited Elm Street round the corner from the station. Historically this street had until 1955 several cigar factories, but was now a hip area with various brewpubs, so I went to one called “The Bearded Goat” as it was supposed to be quirky. It was. I immediately got talking to three gentlemen to whom the idea of changing trains and spending the transit time in a nearby bar was completely alien. I doubt they had ever been on a train. Spain v France was on, and we saw what happened. France barely turned up while Spain played very well. I had mentioned that I was going to watch England and one man at the end of the bar kept going “F*ck England” so I asked him why “Because this is Greensboro North Carolina so f*ck England”. He repeated this various times, but when I came to pay, he paid for my drinks so, yes, quirky.

Nothing else of note. The journey to Atlanta was on the same train, the “Crescent” which I had taken previously from Washington, and which was four and a half hours late. This one arrived on time at 8.30 the next morning. Unfortunately when we went for the bags, mine was not there. The man in charge of the bags called Greensboro. Not there. A little later he told me they had found my bag: it was in Charlotte. But I was returning this evening after the match so no point in sending it here. Nor did they do checked baggage to my next destinations. So we agreed that I should collect my bag in Charlotte on the way back. I understood that someone would bring it to the train, and that the train was scheduled to wait there for 25 minutes. Meanwhile I had a walk of a mile and a half each way to buy shoes (I was wearing slippers), socks and washing things. I spent $69 on these from a mall by the freeway. Various people offered to help. I could borrow Annoushka’s sandals (not her cowboy boots as she was wearing them) and someone offered me another England T shirt but didn’t turn up where we agreed. So it was the dark blue polo shirt, which is England but a bit close to the Argentina change strip.

There were Argies everywhere. Or more correctly a large number of people in Argentinian colours which looked suspiciously new. I walked down to the Arts Centre metro stop and passed a dinky Korean couple in his and hers outfits, his England, hers Argentina. This is the way the British working man’s game is going. Oh, and the ticket price for this one, Category 3 a snip at $980. Change and decay in all around I see.

Unlike the other venues, Atlanta sells food at prices no more than what is charged normally. No price gouging. I had two tamales for $5 and beer in a bar on the way that was definitely not Michelob. Into the ground. The Argies drowned out our National Anthem, which was barely audible. I did something I have only done once before which was to sit down during theirs, put my feet on the next seat and boo theirs loudly.#

And here we came unstuck. The match was a rerun of the semi final against Croatia in Moscow in 2018. We scored first. Bellingham and Kane had not done much – probably tired out – and our most dynamic player was Anthony Gordon who scored the goal. And Tuchel took him off, and replaced him with Konsa, who is a defender. Up to that point I think we had made a good job of neutralising Messi. Now we were playing like Egypt had in the Round of 16. Just defending and as if to emphasise that, on came Dan Burn. You can’t play like that against the Argies, and we couldn’t. There were a number of near misses, saves by Pickford and shots hitting the post before they scored, and quite soon after scored again. Both assists were by Messi. So that was it and we were out of the cup.

This was more of a disappointment than Moscow. This is the one country to whom we don’t like losing. They cheat, they playact, they push our players while the ref isn’t looking, and they bellyache on ad nauseam about the Falklands.

So we are out of the cup. A brief meeting in a taco bar with Paul and Annoushka, all of us utterly deflated. I took the Crescent back from Atlanta to Alexandria, thence another train to Norfolk Virginia, to spend the last days of the trip on the beach. This included a mad dash to the baggage office at Charlotte at 5 am, where after explaining myself for the umpteenth time to an official who hadn’t got a clue what I was talking about, the lady found my bag with an instruction to hand to me tied to it, and I got back to the train before it left. My final thanks to Amtrak which has so much potential but is in dire need of investment.

The third place playoff, which will be against France, will be in Miami, so not practical to go, and I don’t have a ticket for it, so will watch from the beach.

One thing for certain – we will all be Spanish on Saturday.

**The End: Harry Kane and the team come over to thank our supporters following our defeat.**

World Cup part two – Mexico and the Round of 16

This was about as different from the US part of the competition as it was possible to get. While in the US the cup had been “pimped out” to a nation barely aware of it, in Mexico, it involved everything. Those of the population who were not wearing their green shirts were wearing the shirts of the white change strip. The signs, billboards and TV advert were everywhere about “el tri”, the popular name for their team, and moreover, this was their first chance to advance further in the competition since 1986. My own view: the World Cup should have been staged entirely in this football-mad country, with its historic stadia, and even if that was not possible, it should at least have had quarter and semi final matches. As it was, this Round of 16 match, involving the co-host, at their iconic Aztec Stadium, was to be the last match to be staged in the country. And no wonder, when we were the opposition, this was being billed locally as the most important match in their history.

I was bemused a bit by the slogans “La pelota viene a casa” (The ball’s coming home) thinking it was a translation of our song, but actually an exhibition at the Historical Museum taught me that the Aztecs had a ball game which was both a sport and part of their ancient rituals. Looking further, it was definitely not football, as in this game, touching with the hands and feet was prohibited. The ball had to be kept off the ground, and the objective was to propel it over a kind of goal, using the head, waist, upper arms and other parts of the body. So not football

No airport anxiety syndrome on this leg. Angela drove me in the twilight over San Francisco Bay to Oakland Airport, which is small, quiet and civilised, for the overnight flight to Mexico City. The only hiccup was being asked on three separate occasions for my Mexican visa, the second by a lady who was so adamant that I needed one that I started to get worried and asked Google AI if UK citizens needed a visa to visit Mexico. No, we did not, providing it was not for “reasons of lucre”, and gave a reference to a Mexican government site. I repeated the question in Spanish – the language of Oakland Airport – and got the same reply to the same site and showed it to her. Isn’t it wonderful having to teach people their job.

Volaris flies on time and I arrived at Mexico City airport at 4.30 am having had no sleep whatsoever, despite the darkened cabin. The passport control is entirely automated, and everything was very orderly. Waiting for a bus to take me from the terminal to the city, I asked an elderly lady who had come out for a smoke, where did one buy the bus cards. I understood that the City operates a card system similar to the London Oyster card but not how to acquire and top up the cards. “At the metro ticket offices” she said. But there wasn’t one at the airport. “Never mind, you can have mine” she said. She said it had 50 pesos on it, which would cover the journey, but wouldn’t accept any money for the card. She said she did not need it as she was an OAP. What age are OAPs in Mexico? 60.

So, my first impressions of Mexico City – an orderly airport, friendly people, including the police who directed me to the bus stop and the driver of number 4 which took me through deserted streets to a square called Pino Suarez Sur, a square to which I seemed to keep coming back. At this square, according to google maps, I had a bus number 175 to Tlalpan. There was a metro here with a ticket office and I put money on the card, mistakenly believed that the 30 peso fare for the number 4 was the regular fare and put 200 pesos on the card. Actually the 30 peso fare was a special one for the airport and the regular fare is 5 or 6. There are 23 pesos to the pound, so you can see how cheap everything is. Regarding number 175, in fact no one knew anything about buses. A man approached me asking for 10 pesos for the bus fare to his job interview. As he did not seem like a normal beggar I asked for help regarding number 175. Another man with an unpleasant face and a squint in each eye joined in the conversation. I didn’t like the look of this second man. The first one motioned me to follow him and we crossed the main road. “That man is going to rob you” he said. “I thought the same” I said looking back. The man with the squints was motioning to me “no, don’t go with him”. Maybe the first one would. The square was comparatively deserted but some women were making up sandwiches at a stall and I bought a coffee there and asked for the change in 10 peso coins. The man took me to a side street where a bus was waiting, with “Hoepedales” on the front. “You want hospedales” he said. The bus was about to leave so I gave him the coffee, which was revoltingly sweet, and a 10 peso coin, and got in.

Well, the bus system is exactly the same as the Ukrainian marshrutki. There are no numbers on the buses, just destinations. The fare is 9.50 pesos, and you have to throw (literally) a 10 peso coin into a box with a slot on the top. No change given, so I made a point of saving these 10 peso coins. I was very thankful to this man as I returned to this square for the bus back several times, finding it much quicker and more comfortable that the metro and light railway, which was the alternative, and also more direct. On this first journey, following google maps, it took me right past the Azteca and then to Tlalpan, where I got off.

Tlalpan is a small town or large village which has been subsumed into the sprawling metropolis that is Mexico City. It has a lot of colonial style buildings, a central square, all festooned for the World Cup, some nice cafes and narrow streets, and eventually the Quinta Soledad which is a converted monastery belonging at one time to an order called the Maristas. This now includes a small hotel, and, separately a high class and rather expensive restaurant, as well as some beautiful gardens and another café. It was now 8.30 am but they let me check in early for no extra charge, which was very kind of them, and so I went for breakfast in Tlalpan. The Azteca was a walk of about 40 minutes and Dave’s Airbnb was actually half way along the walk. I went to find it, stopping for Tacos at a street vendor on the way. Dave wasn’t in (which I already knew) so I continued onward to the metro and thence to the centre or Plaza Mayor at a station called Zocalo.

**Plaza Mayor: Cathedral and big screen**

This central square, which includes the cathedral, is a kind of copy of the Plaza Mayor in Madrid, but with the cathedral and on a colossal scale. Everything is huge. The square itself, the cathedral, the surrounding buildings, and the crowds. The cathedral was closed, and despite returning to this square several times I never was able to get in, although Dave did. I know that this cathedral has historic Spanish style organs as I have a record of the Swiss organist, Guy Bovet playing them. I stayed a while to watch (I think) the South Africa v Canada borefest.

The crowds got bigger and I found it impossible to get back to the metro station. There was a FIFA fan zone mixed up in the square and everything was swairling in that direction. I don’t like FIFA and don’t want to patronise their parks. I tried to move away from the square against the flow of people. It was difficult. I could not get a connection on my phone, so had no idea where I was going. Then I saw a bus stop for number 4, but in the other direction, so, although being a bit reticent about Pino Suarez, with its squint eyed man, I returned there and took the same bus marked Hospedales to Tlalpan.

For the evening before the game, someone from the England supporters Club had organised a booze cruise along the Aztec Canal system at Xochimilco. Actually it was Monica, the Mexican wife of one of our members from Exeter. This is very difficult to describe, but I would say that in all of the years of following England, must have been one of the craziest events I have been on.

Xochimilco is at the end of the light railway. A walk of about 30 minutes through quite touristy strrets brings you to the embarkation points. the boats are flat bottomed oversize wooden punts, painted in bright colours, and are propelled by punting. We paid £10 for the event and this included unlimited beer and tequila which Monica would pour down our throats literally, intermittently throughout the trip. We were some time starting. The picture is at the start while we were still relatively sober.

**Booze cruise, Dave and me on the left, Annoushka and Adam on the right**

With the flags and our songs we were obviously English so every other boat we passed serenaded us with “Mehico, Mehico”. We made moves to kidnap the girls from boats passing, through assorted insults, welcomes and songs at other boats depending on their occupants and eventually reached the far end, where we had a technical stop and were joined by Mariachis, one of whom played our songs on his trumpet, and much better than our own trumpeter. We had two boats joined together and it was necessary to cross the sections boat to get to land and guess who disgraced himself by falling into the water…..Actually it was just my left leg that was left soaking as I was pulled out, but a bit embarrassing. Still, my phone with the ticket on it was in my right pocket.

So we broke our rule of no drinks the night before matches in the most comprehensive way.

The game was the next day which was a Sunday. Tlalpan also has an Anglican Church, the Church of the Holy Ghost (Espiritu Sanctu). It does not advertise itself at all, and I found it using an AI search. It was right opposite where I had got off the bus on arrival and there was no notice board and the only entrance seemed to be one to go up the tower. I went up this and found the church on the next floor. I introduced myself to the vicar who was a lady, “Madre Belli” and to Rafa who was the churchwarden and who beckoned me to sit next to him. The service was our old Rite B in Spanish, so very easy to follow. They had an organ but no organist. I offered to play but there was no music edition and their hymns were different so we sang from a tape recorded accompaniment.

The sermon was quite lovely. Madre Belli brought the match into it “Today we are all waiting for something big to happen” and linked it to the reading from the prophet Zacharaiah: “Behold I come riding on an ass”, and the Israelites in Babylon waiting for their return. The last hymn though was “Dios de grace y Dios de Gloria (God of Grace and God of Glory) sung to Cwm Rhondda, which was nice. The congregation included one very craggy elderly lady, very made up, and about a dozen of what I would say were some of the poorest of the region, but wearing their Sunday best. I do find it quite touching the way so many in South and Central America have adopted Anglicanism, when they have no contact with England and are so unlikely ever to go there.

After the service, to the Azteca slowly. The clouds gathered in the early afternoon and a most tremendous storm, developed. Lightning with crashes of thunder almost immediately afterwards. It was a walk of 40 minutes and after 30 the heavens opened and I took refuge under a canopy with a group of Mexican dancers in traditional costumes.

The Azteca is one of the great stadia of the world. It was actually built for the Mexico Olympics of 1968 but hadrdly used. It came into its own during the World Cup of Mexico 1970.

Mexico 70 has a special place for me as it is the earliest World Cup which I remember. I was 8 years’ old. It was all everyone talked about. Of course we were going to win it. Anything else was inconceivable. We were World Champions. We had the same team and Sir Alf from 1966. We had the World Cup Rally, World Cup coins at ESSO stations. Mars even issued an Aztec chocolate bar – a kind of Mars sized Milky Way with raisins. Sir Alf took the team to Quito and Bogota to acclimiatise playing friendlies against Ecuador and Colombia. We had the infamous stolen bracelet scandal involving the arrest of Bobby Moore. We had “Back Home” and Sir Alf shipping out Findus Fish Fingers, Malvern Water, an English bus and driver to create an English bubble – from which Gordon Banks apparently escaped to get his upset stomach. We had the England v Brazil match with the best attacking side ever – Brazil with Pele, Jairzinho, Rivelino and Tostao – facing the best ever defensive side – us, with the Bobby Moore tackle and the Banks save, and this game was played at the Azteca. We also, of course, had the defeat to West Germany in Guadalajara, and many argue that our football has never really recovered since.

The last time England played at this stadium was the match involving Maradonna and the “Hand of God” in 1986. So some ghosts to rest.

The atmosphere inside the stadium was tremendous. About 5,000 of us against about 75,000 of them. Every time an English song came on they booed. Every time a Mexican song came on, they joined in. The match was delayed for an hour because of the storm so we had quite a lot of this.

Then the National Anthems. I have recorded the Mexican one, with 75,000 Mexicans bellowing theirs out at the tops of their voices. It is quite something.

Then the match, which you probably all know. Tuchel’s game plan was excellent. We slowed everything down for the first half hour – painful to watch but frustrated the Mexicans – then scored two goals. They went quiet and we got in a few lines of “You’re not singing any more” before they got one back and the beer started flying. Apparently it is a Mexican tradition but we were not well segregated, and there were several rows of Mexicans beneath us who threw full paper cups of beer at us after their goal. There was one Mexican beneath me getting very agitated an clearly looking for a fight, while the stewards did nothing. A notice went up in Spanish that anyone throwing beer cups would be identified and ejected: fat chance.

So the second half. Our penalty, their penalty and then the VAR check, which we thought was for a foul on Anthony Gordon and was actually for a supposed foul by Jarell Quansah which resulted in him being sent off – and given a two match ban. Compare that with Balogun who got Trump to intervene for a far worse foul.

So Tuchel brought on Burn, and we had agonising backs to the wall stuff, with Mexico getting corner after corner, but getting nowhere due to excellent defence from Burn and others. Then 11 minutes of added time, which was acrtually 13 and finally over, and we were through. Burn did so well to keep the Mexicans out that the joke now is that Trump will offer him a job.

Despite the animosity during the game, afterwards everyone was wonderful and we have to note what excellent losers they were. We were held back for a very long time, but on the lengthy procession down the ramps to get out, on the streets outside and even in the bars, people kept coming up to us, shaking our hands and wishing us the best of luck: many hoped we would win the cup. After all, there is no disgrace in going out to the winners. Even the chap who wanted a fight calmed down and shook hands with whoever he has been shouting insults at.

I lost Dave in the crush. Actually, we were bobbing up and down on the ramp, and, being old enough to remember Ibrox and Heysel, I moved against a supporting wall. So a slow return to Tlalpan via a bar called “Taco Sea” and a few beers with others.

I had two further days in Mexico City for sightseeing. The first was rather abortive – a trip on a metrobus, a kind of guided bus system into the centre, to see the Belles Artes museum (closed, although you could walk into the entrance hall) and cathedral (closed). The second, much more successful, to go to Chapultepec, the castle fashioned by the unfortunate Maximilain Habsburg, and site of the Mexican Museum of History.

The joys of being old. I queued up to pay a rather stiff entrance fee of 310 pesos to be told that entry was free for over 60s.

The Museum of History, is really the Museum of history from 1492. There is very little about the Aztecs or their culture, and a lot about the Spanish, founding “New Spain” and almost excusing their brutality, as it had been imbued in them by their long fight against Islam. Once we get to 1810, though, the exhibitions start to warm up. 1810 was the first insurrection against the Spanish, and I was able to learn about the people whose names adorned various streets. The 1810 insurrection was led by Miguel Hidalgo, whose name is the street going into Tlalpan from the bus stop. Insurrectiones is a principal metro and bus interchange. Benito Juarez (airport and various streets) was the President of the second republic and opponent of Maximilain Habsburg.

After independence, the exhibitions tell us, Mexico tried various form of government. Mexico though was beset by bankruptcy and internal division. We got the Mexican-American War from the Mexican point of view, and it is hard not to sympathise with it. The US was guided by its “Manifest Destinty” – the parallels with Nicholas I and putin’s “Holy Russia” are striking, and President Polk started the war on a pretext. At the end, Mexico was forced to cede over half of its territory, including California, New Mexico and Arizona to the USA in feturn for $15 million.

The involvement of the unfortunate Maximilian came later, and lasted from 1864 till 1867. Maximilian was invited to be head of state by Mexican conservatives supported by French intervention who wished to make Mexico a monarchy. He was the younger brother of Franz Josef, and his candidacy was based on his descent from Chales V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, who had conquered Mexico for Spain. He lasted only three years. His liberalism upset the conservatives, while the Liberals viewed him as an outsider. Additionally, the US regarded Napoleon III of France’s involvement as a breach of the Monroe Doctrine, and continued to support Benito Juarez. So Maximilian’s hold was not firm even from the start. He lived at Chapultepec, which explains the European influences on its architecture, and also the thoroughfare from the castle to the city. But he only lasted three years before being executed by firing squad, far from his home at Miramare near Trieste.

Returning through the woods from the castle I stopped to buy Chapulines from a stall. I have had these before, and they tend to revolt most people. They are a kind of grasshopper which the Mexicans fry with some chilli. You eat them with lemon sauce, which I asked the seller to add. Here they are.

As for the other matches in the Round of 16. We don’t like Ronaldo, due to various machinations by him in the past, such as at the 2006 World Cup when he got Rooney sent off in our quarter final against Portugal and then winked at the cameras. So, it was nice to see him blubbing after their loss to Spain. In fact, it was Martinez who lost the match to Spain by playing him and never substituting him. He had 13 touches of the ball and even his own teammates seemed to be ignoring him. So, Portugal were playing with 10 men and a “muscular scarecrow”. Brazil’s defeat to Norway was a surprise, despite the press going on about Brazil being “not what they were”. This meant that we would face them rather than Brazil in the next round. Egypt’s defeat 3-2 to Argentina, after being 2—0 up was controversial. I watched this one at the ayuntamiento in Tlalpan. Egypt, after playing so well, basically fell apart after Argentina’s first goal and Argentina attacked with a ferocity lacking in the early part of the game. Messi showed a lot of creativity and they won, but the conspiracy theorists – that FIFA want another France-Argentina final – had plenty of material. Finally, USA v Belgium. Belgium is a hard country to like, what with its rainy weather, associations with Brussels bureaucracy, the EU, and odd people who can’t even decide what language they want to speak. But after Trump’s intervention to rescind the red Card of the USA’s star player, Balogun, just about all of the rest of the world were supporting them and they trounced the USA 4-1 and we even had the delight of Lukaku’s goal celebrations mimicking Trump’s jerky style of dancing. I watched this in a nice bar in the Tlalpan Square where I celebrated with “the best Tequila you’ve got”. It was called 1800, matured for years and not cheap but very smooth.

Our match was the last match to be hosted by Mexico. As I have said, in my opinion it was a great shame that this football-mad country should have to surrender all of the later stage games to a country that was not even interested in it. In fact, I would rather that the whole tournament was in Mexico. I suppose having staged it twice, it was thought preferable to give other countries a chance, and multi-country bids are the fashion now, but there we are

Part three – Florida and the Quarter Finals.

Airport anxiety syndrome returned in a large way for the trip back to the USA. First, I never received a flight confirmation from Trip.com and when I went on their customer service sections, I was asked for an email address and it didn’t recognise mine. I checked my bank statement. Yes, I had paid for it. I then went through various other options, found my locator code and asked for a confirmation. The confirmation replied “Dear Angela” before confirming the details. All I can think of was that their software had picked up Angela’s address from the router. I had used Trip.com rather than the airline directly as, although it was a Volaris flight, when I searched for this one on their site it denied all knowledge of it. Trip.com was not the cheapest for the flight on its own with no extras, but was the cheapest for flight with a checked bag. Interesting.

Next, checking in on line. I could not find any way to check in via Trip.com so on the offchance input my locator and surname on the Volaris app which I still had, and lo and behold it came up. The check in procedure on this one includes various gems like having to scan your passport on your phone, which it resolutely refuses to do, either because there is too much light or because there is not enough light, and finally at the end of all this nonsense, and inputting Angela’s address for the umpteenth time as contact and finding the name of my first hotel, it refused to check me in as it said I needed a visa – which of course is not true as I have an ESTA. ESTAs have been around for over 10 years, so it is about time they thought about this.

So an early start. First the bus to Pino Suarez, and we were caught in the Mexican rush hour. Having been in a near deserted square at 6 am on a Saturday I was not prepared for the gridlock at 7 am on a weekday. From Pino Suarez, a metro to San Lorenzo to catch the number 4 which I remembered. San Lorenzo is a big interchange and everything is signposted except for the thing you want, so a policemen directed me. I had just enough time at the stop for my last tacos – pork this time including various odd bits so I had pig’s snout mixed up in mine. for the record the tase was similar to the trotters.

Next, the airport was not as orderly as on arrival. Again everything is signposted apart from what you want. The bus arrives at arrivals. International departures are upstairs at the end of the building, I was told, so went there, to see all the traditional airlines but not Volaris. Someone said they were at Gate 4 downstairs. “But isn’t that National Departures?” So I went back downstairs, along the building almost to where I had got off the bus, where there was a helpful sign saying “Volaris, National and International Departures”. Next the inevitable huge queue, woman checking that we did not step over the line, orders to queue on the left, moving by one person every 10 minutes and so on. Finally I got to the front, showed why I couldn’t check in, and the girl entered my ESTA to the system manually. “I loathe these apps” I told her. I suppose she gets this a lot from people our age. Anyway, I didn’t have to pay an airport check in fee this time.

Airport anxiety syndrome over, to the departure gates where I saw Paul Probyn, father of Annoushka, in a red shirt, sitting on the floor. Annoushka and Adam had stomach issues. They were on the plane in front of me and we flew to Orlando where they were for two days, renting a car for Miami.

I lost them at passport control in Orlando. Here the problem was not a previously cancelled passport but that I was put in a queue where the official disappeared when I was at the front, and his replacement spent maybe 5 minutes looking at my passport. “Why are you so nervous?” he asked me. Am I not allowed to be nervous then? I told him I had had a long day. He looked at me with some distaste “Hey, have you got a job? What do you do?”. I told him. What was my reason for coming to the USA. “The World Cup”. “Oh FIFA”, as he called it. No stamp this time.

Orlando is an odd place. It does not appear to have a centre to it. It was baking hot. The bus costs $2 but if you need to take another,you tell the driver you want a transfer and he gives you a card that you use for the next bus. There is a validity time stamped on the back. So one bus to somewhere, then cross the road and wait in the blistering heat by the traffic lights as huge car after huge car passes you. “Hey are you from England?” someone asked me through the window. “I know someone from Manchester”. He reminded me of the Jasper Carrott sketch “Are you from England? Do you know Mr Smith?”.

From the second bus, I had a walk of about a mile, parallel with a freeway, through the heat to my hotel, Baymont by Wyndham, checked in, and went out to buy food. There were places about a mile away. The sun was setting but it was still very hot. I had not realised that my hotel was next to a prison, or more correctly a “correctional facility”. I hope the prisoners have air conditioning. The whole area is flat and with a lot of lakes, with frogs croaking from one on the way back.

I had better luck the next day. The hotel did an excellent free breakfast, and there was in fact another bus which did the mile’s walk followed by the continuation of the route of my bus the previous night to the Amtrak Station. On the bus I was grilled by an old man on how the tickets worked and how much they cost. It was his first time on a bus. He looked at my bag: “Hey are you are a homeless person?” “Do I look like a homeless person?” I asked him. Maybe I did by now. Wonderful.

As I only had two days left on my USA pass but still had some spare segments, and as I had been advised that Tampa was much nicer than Orlando, I had decided to break the journey to Miami there. But the train was two hours late. It is an odd service as Tampa is on a dog’s leg, so the train stops at Lakeview on the way to Tampa, then goes back to Lakeview and stops again there before going south to Miami. The mechanics are interesting on the way in. Approaching Tampa it goes into a loop and then reverses into the station.

To keep John happy, I went to the bar he recommended in Tampa , and from which he had asked me to call him as it was only a walk of 15 minutes. A surprise: it was a non alcoholic bar, serving drinks made of “Kava” infusions. This was not Spanish sparkling wine but some kind of South Sea Island herb. Mine was mxed with orange, lemon and lime so very refreshing in this heat. The girl he had wanted to speak to, Lauren, was not there, but another called Sarah, a girl with blonde hair but some locks died blue, very friendly and very laid back in character. Yes, she remembered him: he had been very loud. “But no alcohol?” I asked: “He kept going out for alcohol then going back”.

A walk up various blocks to the bus station then another bus to close to my hotel in Ybor City. The driver’s cash capture system was not working so we all got a free ride. The next day I had to visit a T Mobile store to top up my phone as their system would not accept any of my credit cards. This became a diversion that nearly caused me to miss the train as the first T Mobile store I found was “Metro by T Mobile” and they could not make top ups. So one bus to this place, then another further out to a neighbourhood called Hillsborough first to what turned out to be another Metro by T Mobile and then finally to a T Mobile. Really if they make it so difficult for customers to pay then they don’t deserve any customers.

I had a long wait for a bus back that never came, and to make it worse, just by the bus stop was a ragged black lady, maybe under the influence of something, shouting various imprecations either at me or the car park behind me. The advertised bus never came, and I called an Uber, driven by a helpful chap called Johann, to take me back to the station. As it turned out, I needn’t have rushed as the train ti Miami was two hours late.

The train passed south through Florida, through fields of orange trees, made numerous stops, especially along the coast at West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale, eventually crawling into Miami two hours late. The station was a single platform terminus situated some way from the centre. As Dave had pulled out of this one, I had reserved two nights at a hostel advertising itself as “Peace and Quiet” in Little Havana. The house was without visible number (127) and difficult to find. First impressions were not good as most of the residents were long term and their things were everywhere, but after a while, the owner / warden became more friendly. They offered free dinner and breakfast, but made a daily charge for the lockers. As I had arraged to meet Paul and Annoushka about a mile away – Adam had returned to the UK – I left and went to their restaurant, “Craft”. As it happened, I still got a free dinner as they had been served massive portions, which I helped to finish off.

Despite the poor first impressions, I actually slept better at this hostel than anywhere else in the US. I was in a middle bunk of a room of three bunk beds, but the mattress was very comfortable. Most of the others were long term guests all working night shifts, so no one else in the room when I left, and everyone else fast asleep in the morning when I woke up. The free breakfast was water melon, hard boiled eggs, Brazilian sausage and tea.I met a Brazilian called Fanini and a Turkish chap and we talked about the World Cup. In fact the Turk clocked me first: “That’s Kevin Keegan’s shirt” he said. I was wearing the England shirt from the 1982 World Cup. “Yes, 1982” I said. “That’s the first World Cup I remember” he said. “Mine was Mexico 70”.

Uber to Brickell, in central Miami giving Fanini a lift too. If Little Havana is all small individual bungalows, Brickell is surreal, all tall thin high rise buidings with monorails, a system called Metro Mover, which Fanini said was free. Brunch with Paul and Annoushka at which point I discovered that, having not trusted anyone in the hostel during the night, I had emptied my trouser pockets of cash and cards, put them in the locker and had forgotten to bring them. So Paul lent me $20. Very embarrassing.

We took an Uber to the shuttle bus pick up point, which was by the Martin Luther King (“MLK”) metro stop. So, unlike the price gougers of Boston and New York, we were offered free transport. Rows and rows of American yello school buses awaited us, and took us to the Miai Gardens Stadium,. some 15 miles further north. Sweltering heat and some walk from Parking Lot 16 yellow to the stadium.

Miami Gardens is another huge and impressive stadium, but unlike Dallas and Atlanta, not air conditioned, so our players, having played in air conditioning, rain, and at altitude, now had heat of about 34 degrees to cope with. Still, it would be wirse for the Norwegians. As usual we were high up.

In the first half we controlled the game well I thought, more or less neutralising their star player ,Haarland. Then Norway scored against the run of play. Our defence at fault again. Shortly before half time we equalised – Jude who else. Then Harry Kane got another two minutes later but it was disallowed for offside. From our view we couldn’t see if that was the case or not. In the second half we were awful and kept giving the ball away. Norway scored again, from a corner – how exposed we are at set pieces – but after a lengthy VAR review the goal was disallowed as |Haarland had thrown one of our players to the ground “Corner retaken” was the verdict, which was a first. Then we were awarded a penalty but the VAR review disallowed that. And so to Extra Time. In the first period of extra time, Jude scored a second, and we managed to hold on. In fact my feeling that Norway gave up in the last 10 minutes. The Norwegian manager substituted Haarland, who had been frustrated for the whole match, and we had won 2-1, despite not playing well.

I heard afterwards that Thomas Tuchel had not been happy with our performance. Actually it is good that we have a manager who can say that. Not the mentality (which he praised) but technical errors.

The trip back was painful. A long walk behind slow walkers to the bus area, then squeezing between buses all with their engines running, then having to wait there breathng in the fumes, then crawling at a snail’s pace back to the MLK metro station where I was shouted at twice, once for trying to cross a road, when I should go round, (“but I don’t want the metro, I am going for a bus”) and then once when I had gone round for trying to cut a corner. An immense black man bellowed at me – apparently I had strayed two yards from the designated route.

Out of the bus station, then a mile’s walk to a bus stop where I had to wait 45 minutes for a bus. There were a lot of obviously poor people walking around. One woman asked me for a cigarette and when I said I didn’t have any asked if I knew anywhere that sold single cigarettes. “You could try the smoke shop over there” I said. She asked me for a dollar to buy one, and my name, then for another dollar. “Howdy Alan” said a man who appeared from nowhere as I gave her two dollars, and they went off together, ignoring the smoke shop. I had told her I had left my cash behind, and said she couldn’t have any more as I needed them for the bus. Actually I didn’t as his cash capture machine was broken as well, and I was the only passenger on the bus apart from another bus company official.

This was quite amusing. It was bus number 22 and it plies the 22nd avenue from top to bottom. The hostel was in the 19th avenue, so not far from a stop, and so I returned, in time to watch the last 10 minutes of normal time of Argentina v Switzerland with the Turkish chap in the kitchen.

I had however eaten nothing since the salad at brunch so went out and found a 24 hour takeaway selling Nicaraguan food. for the record, braised beef and vegetables, plantain and zucchini in a cheese sauce, which I took back for the rest of extra time. Yes, Messi does look dangerous and creative. The general impression was that Argentina had not played well and that we would have a chance. The Swiss had a player sent off and were parking the bus but I saw the absolutely superb goal scored by Alvarez.

I did not see the other quarter finals but one prediction – that win or lose, there would be riots in Paris after the France-Morocco match – came true. Then Belgium were unlucky to lose their goalkeeper Courtois, and let Spain score through an error by their reserve goalkeeper.

A general comment: We have an expanded competition to let in more countries from Africa and Asis, but at the end of all the Group and first two knock out rounds, we had quarter finals involving six countries from Europe plus Morocco and Argentina. Now we have semis involving Argentina and three European countries. It should be easy for Morocco to improve, but otherwise, for the moment, we have the dominance of the European countries. My prediction for winner is still France.

World Cup 2026

Part one. The Group stage

The airport effect.

In a recent article in the ‘Spectator’, Rory Sutherland writes about what he calls the “airport effect” – “that constant low-level anxiety you experience at airports by knowing that any deviation from imposed rules – from an overweight cabin bag to a misheard announcement – can spiral into a nightmare. The larger and more dehumanised the airport becomes, the worse the anxiety.”

I had three doses of this on the outward journey. By some act of absent mindedness, I uploaded an old passport while trying to check in online. This was the first dose.

I realised the mistake at the verification stage, but the system would not allow me to remove it. I tried leaving the system and doing it again and was pleased to learn that everything would be lost – except it wasn’t. “Information already uploaded”, it said and there was no way to remove it. I tried a chat facility with an operator from Condor Airlines, and after some time was told that once a passport was uploaded it was locked in the system and it could only be removed at the airport, and I should arrive at least 3 hours early. “Der computer sagt ‘nein’?”, I asked him, but he did not recognise the joke.

In this way, 11 June became a day of 30 hours. Arriving at the airport at 5.30 a.m. required waking up at 4.00. The lady at the desk, after refusing to speak to me in Hungarian (“English only”, which I noted as meaning her intermediate level English), said she had removed the old passport and I should check in online to avoid a fee. Except she hadn’t. Trying to check in again online, I received one of those irritating “something went wrong” messages, “airport check in only” and had to queue again. I had to copy this on to the phone for the lady did not seem to be able to deal with non-standard situations. I paid the €25 fee and in return received two nice old-fashioned boarding cards.

The second was at Frankfurt. Hungary and Germany being both in Schengen, there was no passport control on leaving Budapest, but there was in Frankfurt, which was where I was leaving the Schengen area. Unfortunately, as were several hundred other people at the same time. There were only 4 booths open and the queue was considerable. Part of this was automated and was able to be done by standing in front of a machine which checked your passport, but a physical check and stamp was still required. There was an hour and 45 minutes between the flights and after an hour in the queue we were only halfway to the booths. There was a group of russians with American passports behind me. Not being a lover of russians, I did not say a word to them, but I could understand what they were saying and I understood that they were on the same flight. They persuaded a lady who was supervising the queue to let them jump it, so I tagged along behind it, telling the lady that I was on the same flight.

This is where it helps to be small. When we got to the front there was quite a fracas with those at the front objecting to us jumping the “line” and everyone shouting at each other in lower-intermediate English (hence the “line”, you only get “queue” at upper intermediate or beyond). One of the russians had lifted up the rope to let another, maybe his wife, to get through. I nipped underneath it and slipped in between two tall people, didn’t say a word, and didn’t look at anybody, and in less than a minute was in front of the passport desk, while the police sent the russians to the back. “What was all that about?” I asked the guard, all innocent hem hem. I believe the russians missed the flight as I did not see them on the plane.

The flight was surprisingly not bad at all. My companions were an American lady of Croatian origin and two Moroccans living in France. Why do we keep getting drawn against Croatia, and, more to the point, why do we never play well against them? We did play well against them in the Euros in 2004 when Wayne Rooney burst on the scene, but since then we have had the Wally with the brolly match in 2007, the bobble in 2006, the World Cup semi-final in 2018, and now this match. We have also got them in the Nations’ League in October, a game to be played behind closed doors as a punishment for racist chanting or something by their supporters, which is actually punishing us as well – and for the second time as well. The Croatian was not going to our match with them in Dallas but was going to Croatia v Ghana in New York and had paid over $600 for her ticket. More on the ticket pricing anon but just about everyone is aware of the prices charged. In that respect, it was good to see all the empty seats at the South Korea – Czech Republic match. FIFA have been too greedy – if such a thing is possible – and this is the most effective illustration of it.

The third was on arrival in New York. The passport control here is very very slow. Mercifully after about 45 minutes of waiting, the US Citizens having all cleared, their booths were opened for us as well. However, I had to go to an office for special clearance as I had reported a lost passport. The Guard asked me had I ever reported a lost passport and I said yes, I had lost one on a train in Hungary in 2022. After 4 years, that was the first time anyone in any country had asked about that. Horror stories about US passport control to date include the Iraqi captain who was questioned for 9 hours and the Somalian referee who was sent back, despite having a diplomatic passport. The biggest shame about that last one was FIFA’s lack of support for one of its own referees, with Infantino merely shrugging it off as the US can allow in who it likes. So I got off lightly.

Plague of Scots

If Moses had inflicted these on the Egyptians, he might have been allowed out of Egypt with much less fuss. New York JFK to Penn Station is a trip on an overhead monorail to Jamaica station and then the Long Island Railway to the station. There were Scots everywhere. A group of half a dozen, two in kilts got on at the next terminal monorail stop. To one of those who got on the monorail I asked how they were getting to the match in Boston. This stadium is about 25 miles from Boston and on matchdays, the local authority is closing all normal public transport and having special trains at $80 return – another example of blatant price gouging. One of our supporters had chartered 3 buses for us, priced at $30 but was told at the last minute that those vehicles have now been requisitioned by FIFA and were no longer available. He told me that they were not going to to any of the matches and were just there for the atmosphere. Go figure, as they say in Noo York.

Jamaica Station was sweltering. More Scots, and more again at Penn Station where I could see there was a train to Boston. Pasty white faces and pasty white legs poking out from under their kilts. I have since read numerous newspaper reports about how they have endeared themselves to the Bostonians not only by drinking their City dry but also paying top whack prices into the bargain. I suppose they have had 28 years to save up but it does belie both the reputation of the canny Scot and the cost of living crisis. One report read of a man who had downed 17 vodka seltzers in the stadium. At stadium prices I would not buy so much as a bottle of water but there you go. They drink, wave their flag, sing and are sweet and cuddly. We drink, wave our flag and sing and we get called names. However, not wishing to be uncharitable, and with Don Hyam of Wrexham in their side, I would like to wish them the best of luck on the off chance that they get out of their group and that we meet them later in the tournament.

Washington

Train 97 to Washington departed and ran on time as far as a station called BWI where the locomotive gave up the ghost. After 40 minutes or so, we managed to start up and got an announcement that we were now on our way to Washington and that nothing else would delay us. Except it did. As if on cue, the moment the Guard had said this, the train lost speed and we stopped again. “Famous last words” I announced to the rest of the carriage. The Guard then said they would try something else. They would switch off the power inside the train to conserve power for the locomotive. This was in fact something of a blessing as the carriage had a very aggressive air conditioning, such that, despite the weather, the carriage was freezing cold. So we limped into Washington over an hour late.

I stayed in Arlington Virginia at Days Inn. My Uber driver was called Abdul Kadir and came from Somalia. I said that was a good name – had he heard of the leg spinner Abdul Qadir? No he hadn’t. What did he think of the Somalian referee being locked out. “Trump is a Sikh man” , “Sikh? Oh, sick” as I imagined Donny in a turban with a fly whisk. Did he like America? Very much. He had been there 30 years and said the people were good people. It turned out he was particularly happy as my route was on his way home, so I was his last customer for the day.

It was a nice hotel and good value at $45 a night, including a free but basic breakfast where I had to make porridge in a microwave and it boiled over so I had to clean up the mess. Then a bus directly to the centre. $2.25 money in the slot and no change given. Except it terminated at Pentagon City so metro to Archives and then a walk to have a look at the White House. Well the White House was not just off limits but the whole area round the gardens was boarded off with hoardings. “Sarry surr you can’t come through here” said the policeman. The sign said: “Event ticket holders only” and a lot of people with lanyards round their necks were busying around. “What’s the event?” I asked him. It was a cage fight (UFA) in honour of Trump’s 80^th birthday. I crossed the road again by where Rhodes’ Tavern once stood, recalling one of my favourite bits of American history, when we went to America in 1814 “to teach Jonathan a lesson” and amongst other things burnt the White House. We did not burn this Tavern down then as Admiral Cockburn’s order was only to burn public buildings and not damage private property. Then I followed the policeman’s directions down the hill to Constitution Avenue and turned right.

Walking down the hill the White House was still boarded up and out of view, then up the other side, with hoardings all round. At every entrance there were assorted police, homeland security and secret service – not very secret if you are wearing a badge saying so, I thought. This was not even the day of the fight which is tomorrow. I would hate to think what it must cost to have all these people hanging around doing nothing.

Coming to the north side of the White House, there was a space by fencing where it was possible to see the building and where there was a group of Chinese tourists taking pictures – so I asked one of them to take mine for the record.

Then back to Constitution Avenue and so to the Capitol – which we did burn in 1814. Apparently the British soldiers piled up all the chairs in the middle, while one of them sat in the Speaker’s Chair and asked his comrades “Shall we burn this den of Yankee democracy? All those in favour say ‘aye’”/ The vote was carried and the building was torched.

From here, I walked to Union Station, and thence for a pint in the City Tavern. A caravan of missionaries was on the route selling very nice pies as a fund raiser for $4. “Good food, good cause” said the billboard. So I had a pie for Jesus.

I came back to the north side of the White House where I had taken the picture. Two men with placards stood in the place where I had taken my picture and one of them was bellowing through a megaphone at the White House in general and probably Donny in particular. “Riches will not save you in the day of death” he hollered A tall thin black man pushed some religious tracts into my hands and put an “I love Jesus” cap on my head. “I agree with 3 of the 4 statements”, I told him, “but you are being a bit hard on the Catholics”. I think the false prophet of the Revelation might be omeone else”. He asked me for a donation for the cap, so I gave him something.

Leaving them behind me – but not for long as the two hollerers followed at a distance, left and down to Constitution Avenue I then walked the length of it to the Lincoln Memorial, then over the Memorial Bridge in sweltering heat to Arlington on the other side, metro and bus back to the hotel.

There was not a glimpse of the World Cup in Washington, and no interest in it from anyone I met. As a journalist in the Times wrote “FIFA has pimped out the World Cup to a country which is not interested in it”. Trump missed the opening for his wretched cage fight. At least Mexico put on a worthy opening match – which I missed as I was travelling – but then watched South Korea against Czech Republic with its rows of empty seats. Even the USA’s match against Paraguay – a very good 4-1 win for them – did not attract much interest.

On the next day, Saturday, with even more security plaguing the centre of Washington, bus and metro to Union Station to dump my bag ($20 for bag storage!) then off to the Smithsonian Museum of American History. This is a nice museum, though of course I had mixed feelings about the star spangled banner section. The more so about America in the World Wars, with a TV display of how proud they were of their neutrality in 1940 and then of lend-lease, both of which have striking parallels in the russo-Ukrainian War. The US has a long history of making its allies pay for everything while making money themselves out of the wars. Disgraceful.

Still, there was a nice section on the Anglo-American War of 1814 which is barely known about in the UK. Again, the US behaved disgracefully, taking advantage of our being engaged with Napoleon to invade Canada and set fire to York (now Toronto). The English expedition of that year was sent with no other plans than “to teach Jonathan a lesson” (“Jonathan” being at that time our name for the Americans), so not well planned, but includes the hilarious story of President Madison scuttling out of Washington at the last minute, leaving dinner on the table, which the British officers sat down and ate before torching the White House, Capitol, and much of the City. I recommend Peter Snow’s book “When Britain burned the White House” as a very entertaining read of this war and how it ended with our failure to take Baltimore and their blasted star-spangled banner.

There are also good sections on the Korean and Vietnamese Wars. Nothing yet on Afghanistan.

Washington to Nashville.

Back to Union Station and train 19 from New York to New Orleans via Washington and Atlanta, was 3 and a half hours late leaving Washington. Apparently, this time it was some kind of accident on the line at New York which had delayed everything, but I suspect locomotive failure as well as we spent a very long time at Charlotte. My $500 Amtrak USA pass gives me 10 segments in 30 days, and a segment can be as long or as short as you want. If you have to change trains, then the second train is a second segment. Unreserved seats only and no upgrades allowed. Having been on Amtrak before on my round the world trip in 2007 and on a quick trip for two England friendlies in 2006, this was a side of US trains I had not seen. On the previous occasions, I had sleeper tickets (which Amtrak calls “roomettes”). They include meals in the dining car as well, all very civilised but now horrendously expensive. As a comparison, while my ticket from Emeryville to Chicago in 2007 cost around $250, the price now is over $1,000. Hence the USA pass.

Coach seats do not give you access to the Diner, just to a café car which gave us a bottle of water and some snack packs because of the delay. Otherwise, all my fellow passengers were some of America’s poorest and I would note that the only other white ones apart from myself were two Spanish supporters on their way to New Orleans. Amtrak has some practices which are quite different from European trains. First, boarding. You are not allowed to go down onto the platform and wait for your train. Instead, rather like at an airport, you are held behind a boarding gate almost to the last minute. However, the actual gate is only announced at the last minute minus a few seconds. So, for New York to Washington this resulted in one mad charge to form a “line” – with all the usual attendant things and shouting on such occasions, such as second queue developing and going off at angles, and people shouting, and then down the escalators and a second mad charge for seats. A railway official said better at the front of the train, so I went off to the front and got a seat.

For Washington to Atlanta, I expected the same thing so for the second charge went ahead to a coach without a queue, but the attendant said his coach was for New Orleans passengers: Atlanta passengers should go on the previous one and we should have been told that (we weren’t). The attendant for the Atlanta coach gave me a card with “11 / ATL” written on it and I got seat 11 A and B – and luckily both seats for the whole journey as the train filled up at intermediate stops. You have to keep this card visible for the whole journey and there is a notch under the overhead luggage rack for it. The seats are large and I got some sleep. When I woke up, I saw we were in Charlotte, North Carolina. I went back to sleep, but when I woke up again, we were still in Charlotte, North Carolina. Eventually though, we did leave, and it was now light:

Nothing can be finer

Than to be in Carolina

In the maw-aw-aw-aw-aw-nin’

Very nice countryside, neat farms and nice weather-boarded houses:

Strolling with ma girly

When the dew is pearly early

In the maw-aw-aw-aw-aw-nin’

The station at Atlanta is hidden alongside a freeway. It is a single platform and receives one train a day – this one – in each direction. The station building is reminiscent of that at Salford Crescent, being on a corner with very limited parking. However, Salford Crescent has more platforms, more trains and more passengers. I suspect most people living in Atlanta are unaware that they have a rail service.

From here it was a walk of 2 miles to the bus station. Part of the way along, at the Art centre the heavens opened, I went to a café and found I could take a metro from a station outside directly to the bus station so did. The bus station is not a nice area, with various unpleasant looking types loitering around and a whiff of marijuana in the air. I had a few hours to wait, then a bus, on which I was able to get audio commentary of Netherlands v Japan, and a call and messages from one of my Japanese pupils: are you watching us? No but I am listening to you – their supporters sung “Nippon, Nippon” over and over again for the whole match. Then we had a stop, amusingly at Manchester, Tennessee – for the record a small, utterly non-descript town of about 15,000 people – and so to Nashville, and an Uber (Egyptian this time) to Knight’s Inn where I was very happy to have a bed for the next two nights.

Other matches

I have not watched every game, often due to travelling but also with the bloated tournament, they come on thick and fast, there are so many and there is a limit to the amount of this stuff one can watch. Following the first day’s matches, I saw Canada’s draw with Bosnia. Canada, I’m afraid were truly awful, especially in the first half. Their World Cup record prior to this match was played 3, lost 3 and scored 2 goals. The Bosnians only have themselves to blame for letting Canada get its historic first ever point at a World cup. I’m all the more sorry for the Welsh who are not here as they lost their playoff to Bosnia. They would have been in a soft group, where there is all to play for following Qatar’s surprising 1-1 draw with Switzerland, which I did not see.

In keeping with the US’s lack of interest in the World Cup, it is not easy to find matches on TV. Scrolling through the channels you get all the usual stuff – American Football, Ice Hockey, Baseball, so for football I am relying on a Latin American channel which is all in Spanish but easy to understand. I am generally watching 1or 2 games per day so in group C it was Morocco’s draw with Brazil and that superb goal. Morocco are the team of the moment in my opinion. Then I was only able to listen to Scotland grind out its 1-0 win against Haiti. I think Scotland need a point from its other two Games to go through and are more likely to get it against Brazil than Morocco.

For Spain v Cabo Verde, a confession – I just followed it on a minute-by-minute report, but all credit to Cabo Verde for showing them that you can get points without even having the ball. A lesson in how to park the bus, and especially from their goalkeeper.

For Group F it was Sweden’s golazo against Tunisia, (that resulted in the sacking of the Tunisian trainer), and I seem to have missed the other golazo, by Germany against Curacao.

Then the games came on and on. I seemed to miss Australia’s surprising win against Turkey – fair dinkum – but also Saudi – Uruguay, Belgium – Egypt, Ivory Coast – Ecuador and Iraq-Norway.

But then on came the Frogs, and uncharacteristically they have not had their traditional bust-up and came out of the blocks running. Superb play and goals from Mbappé but also confident play – and good defending against a considerably improved Senegal side. So we had no repeat of 2002 when France memorably lost their World Cup opener to Senegal.

Nashville

I didn’t realise that the “Music Valley” and Gran’ Ole Opry were about 5 miles out of town. This was a half hour walk and then a bus ride. Buses here are just $1 flat fare, which is very reasonable. I went to the Music Legends museum, and Madame Tussauds, which claimed to be “The best wax museum in the world”. “What about Madam Tussauds in London” I asked. Nope. Theirs is better. The models are very good, and I even learnt who some of the names are that I keep hearing, such as Beyonce, Rihanna and Justin Timberlake.

Then back to the hotel to watch Iran v New Zealand on the Latin channel with its delectable presenter Linsay Cassinelli.

This game has been noted for various historical reasons, first game of a country at war with a host and so on. For me, slightly more interesting, Wrexham’s Libero Carace (“Liberace” to us) was in the NZ starting line-up. The “All Whites” played in All Black for a change, and the match, while frenetic, was about the standard of a National League playoff.

Nashville to Dallas

So an early start with a bus at 7.05 to arrive in Dallas at 21.45. A huge all-American Uber driver called Floyd this time, who made jokes about what was on the radio, and talked about pies. A nice change.

At Memphis, we had to get out for an hour and a change of driver. On came a wizened Texan with a huge grey beard and an accent to match. He read out the list of stops then said “If you’re not going to any of those then “ged arff mah bass”. Then he read out the rules: “No drugs. No pot, no nose-candy, no alcohol, no smoking no vaping”, and if you want to listen to music only through ear phones.

There were quite a few stops. One comment then – it is hard to find any decent food at these stops. Rows and rows of the kind of snacks that I just don’t want to eat – crisps (potato chips) more crisps, pretzels, biscuits, over-sweetened chocolate, drinks all brightly coloured, fizzy and again over-sweetened. Then we had a stop where they had some ribs and deep fried potato wedges. Eating these, a black came up to me – “you eatin’ ribs, can I have some?” so I gave him a chunk. To go with it, “no added sugar” apple juice. However still unbearably sweet so that must be the apples here.

I listened to Argentina v Algeria on Radio 5 Live and got more and more irritated by the commentator and pundit gushing over Messi. Richard and Dave felt the same when I met them. “Is he the best of all time?” asked the commentator. No, he is not. Pele was and is, and just because you aren’t old enough to remember him does not make any difference.

At least Messi is an ageing star who can still play. This is not the case with Ronaldo at 41 (described by the Independent’s journalist as a “muscular scarecrow”, nor Modri, whose only contribution against us was to give away a penalty.

Dallas

I arrived at Dallas bus station at 10 pm. Uber to our AirBnb, a town house in Arlington, just under 2 miles from the Stadium. I noticed that the driver, Patrice was French. He was from Ivory Coast. Ha ha, you beat Ecuador. Would he go to any matches. No, too expensive, but if you go, I’ll drive you there. He had been in the US for 2 years. Why Dallas? Because his sister was already here. I wished him the best of luck against Germany later this week.

Richard and Dave were already asleep on the top floor and I had the sofa bed on the middle floor. The whole of the next day was preparation for the match. A brunch and beers at the Black Sheep Sports Bar on the way to the ground and at last some decent food – excellent brisket, that had been slow cooked for a long time. Then off to the stadium where we all supported Congo and gloated over the scarecrow’s efforts or lack of them. Under the “no *rseholes” rule, Ronaldo should be dropped. He is blocking younger players from coming through and also inhibiting his team mates. Still the Portuguese did what they always do when they disagree with the referee, crowd round him and intimidate him.

And so to our game. First to note that this was a magnificent stadium, with a roof and air conditioning inside, and a tremendous atmosphere in the hour before the game. Next, the opposition. A big banana skin. We keep getting Croatia, and we don’t play well against them. It was an error on their part to play Modric. As with Ronaldo, he is on the way down and blocking a younger player. We were jittery at the start and awful in the first half. The penalty was a surprise: I thought that French referee, Clément Turpin, hated us. The penalty was weak and the Croatian goalkeeper saved it. Then VAR check. The VAR always fonds against us but not this time, and a retake was ordered as the goalkeeper was not on his line. Harry Kane actually took the same penalty but this time, the goalkeeper went the wrong way. Next, Croatia equalised – awful defending by us, and Pickford should have got to it. Then Kane got one from a corner where, bizarrely, he was unmarked. But the Croatians equalised again right on half time.

We were supposed to be seated in a Group but super FIFA had put me in a separate block from Richard and Dave and I was next to a very large supporter from Portsmouth. Our general feeling from the body language of the players, and the look on Harry Kane’s face as they came back on was that Tuchel had given them a rollicking. If he had, it had the desired effect. We were so much better. Bellingham took the ball down the right and shot: it had goal written all over it. Then a period when we peppered the Croatian goal with shots and we saw a remarkable series of saves from their goalkeeper. Then on came Rashford who scored our fourth.

This was one of those occasions where we all stayed on singing for at least 20 minutes after the game was over. Fantastic atmosphere. Post match celebrations with various others we have met at other games at Division Craft Brewery near the Black Sheep. What a relief. Banana skin avoided. The other match in our group was on Ghana beat Panama 1-0 scoring in the last minute/ “I’m appalled at the lack of diversity in the Ghana side” said someone – not me this time. We got roped in to a trivia quiz night and came 10^th out of about 16 teams. Too many questions requiring US knowledgeThe next day, Richard and Dave went off and I moved to another hotel, some way from the centre. The driver this time, Jhonny, was from Guayaquil, which I know very well. He had been in the US for 40 years, and was now retired but had not been back due to fear of flying. Oh, Guayaquil de mis amores….
Large parts of Dallas, such as Arlington, seem to be without public transport. However there is the DART (Dallas Area Rapid Transport) which I would describe as a tram system, similar to that in Manchester. A day pass costs $6 which is very reasonable, and there was a station half an hour’s walk from the hotel, so a walk there in 35 degree heat to go to the centre to see the Grassy Knoll from where President Kennedy was supposedly shot.

Then back to the hotel for South Korea v Mexico, a match which may decide our opponents in the Round of 16 should we win the group (which I think is now more likely than not. Here for the record is a picture taken on the half hour walk back from the station (C=Urban Centre, Las Colinas) to the hotel.

The next day opened with a storm and rain of biblical proportions. My train was supposed to be at 3.43 pm so I was not unduly worried, but at 10.30 we received a warning text from the local authorities not to go outside, not to drive through water and that there were flash floods and risk of drowning. The sky outside was black and the rain continuous and ferocious. This had been going on already for two hours, and continued for another two when it finished and, although the sun did not come out, the rain at least stopped, and the temperature was down from the 35 of the previous day to about 25.Leaving the hotel, I walked back to the station, and here is the same picture taken after the storm.

Into the centre and so to the sixth floor museum, which is a display and exhibition of the shooting of President Kennedy from the sixth floor of the building – then the book depository – which overlooks the Grassy Knoll. Although it is expensive ($29 is a lot for a single subject museum) it has a very good display of that day, blow by blow, and also less well known, President Kennedy’s election campaign and speeches while president including the famous “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”, and “Ich bin ein Berliner”. Compare this with what America has had for the last few presidencies at least, down now to the stupid cage fight at the White House: “How have the mighty fallen”.

This is the view of the Grassy Knoll from the window from which the shots were fired. The knoll itself is the grassy area on both sides of the road, and the monument on the right side actually predates the assassination. An X in the middle of the road marks where Kennedy was actually shot. There was a lot of discussion about whether it really was Lee Harvey Oswald, as there was believed to have been a person by the monument on the right side of the road, and current research suggests that it may have been both.

Out of the museum and it was again raining very heavily. I received messages from Amtrak. Your train is an hour late. Your train is two hours late. Your train is three hours late. To avoid the rain I went by tram to Union Station, where the wait continued. The train was arriving from San Antonio and apparently a freight train had hit a truck ahead of our train and had blocked the line. The wait continued. I took the opportunity to log on and watch Scotland lose to Morocco. Here is an interesting thing at Dallas Union Station: the sockets are on the edges of the waiting room while the benches are in the middle, so to watch with your computer plugged in, you have to sit on the floor, or in my case on my bag. “No sitting on the floor” a security man told me. I said I wasn’t as I was on the bag not the floor. “We don’t want homeless people here” he said. I said I was not homeless but waiting for a train and showed him my ticket. “OK but if anyone else moves you on you will have to get up”. This is another station with one train a day – this one – in each direction. At 7 pm they announced that they had to lock the station, but we could stay inside. However, if we wanted to go outside, we could not come back in. the match was still on, so I stayed inside. Poor old Scotland, just not good enough, until the last 15 minutes, while Morocco were good for the first 5 minutes, when they scored their goal, then just sat back. At 8 pm the same lady came back with some pizzas and handed us out slices. Then at 8.30 the train arrived.

An unkempt man in a blue shirt with an underfug underneath despite the heat, and a round head with a combover, asked me what my business was. I told him about short term contracts and that I had found it relatively easy to find work in Manchester and why. He had a mixed Australian-American accent and had an irritating habit of replying “Indeed” to everything I said. He seemed to be in office supplies and was going to Long View, the second intermediate stop. He seemed to think I could find him a job in the UK. He wrote later and I sent him a list of contacts, but his salary expectations were way over what he would get in the UK, and I did say he should smarten up if he ever had an interview but was not as uncharitable as to tell him to ditch the underfug.

The train came in. Cue for more chaos. It was not clear which carriage to enter: “hey have they scanned your ticket?” “No”, “Two cars back”. I joined an informal queue to have my ticket scanned, was directed to a carriage for passengers to Chicago and took the seat at the far end, next to the Café Car.

This was a journey of 22 hours, on top of the waiting. Again I had a double seat and surprisingly got about 5 hours’ sleep. There is an official quiet period on these trains from 10 pm to 7 am. No announcements, no music and lights out. People were good at observing this. Breakfast in the Café car. Knowing that the porridge pots (maple syrup and brown sugar flavour) were unbearably sweet I had brought my own milk and topped up with fresh milk they were not bad at all. You can also get breakfast rolls (fine apart from chewy bread – that kind of bread should not go in a microwave) and omelette pots. The café car was hosted by a chatty lady called Rachel. She had started in Chicago, then gone to San Antonio and was on her way back. Four days on (“though it feels more like five”) then four days off. She had met quite a few World Cup travellers and kept up a good sense of humour with some funny announcements all the way. I also met an Englishman who worked at the UN in Geneva and who had had a similar experience to mine regarding marrying a Russian speaking woman (Ukrainian in my case, Kazakh in his), with one son who had left his mother to live with him.

A sight on many trains are the Amish, and here was a group of them getting on at one of the rural stops where we waited for 15 minutes and were allowed out to stretch our legs and get some fresh air. We had another stop like this in St Louis while they hitched up another coach. Here, with my Russian speaking companion we accosted a chap on the platform who turned out to be a refugee from Kherson in Ukraine,: the poor fellow had to deal with Russian in two different English accents. I wonder what he made of us. Then we passed along the Mississippi, through the Mark Twain National Forest and finally to Chicago where we limped in at 7.30 pm, 6 hours late.

Chicago

I had chosen to spend a night in Chicago (1) to get a night’s sleep in a bed (2) as it is not a match venue, hotels are normal prices. However it was late and raining, there was no time for any sightseeing so an Uber to my hotel in the North Shore region, my driver being an Indian post graduate student, actually born in Chicago and working part time as a driver to help with expenses. The hotel was fine, but insisted on a $100 deposit for breakages etc. I looked and saw this was on my confirmation and I had missed it. Other hotels have done this since, and I should put on record that this is a disagreeable practice, insulting to the customer. I have never broken anything and would always pay if I did.

I thus had one day till the evening in drizzly Chicago. It was a Sunday, so I first took two buses to St Pauls by the Lake Episcopalian Church (confusingly there is a second church, St Paul’s on the Lake Catholic church). The Church was built in 1882, and has a gallery with a cantor. It also has an electric action organ. The organist was passable but nothing special.

It was Fathers’ Day (which I had forgotten). The church was not badly attended and we had a reading from Jeremiah where he blamed God for all his troubles – this was developed in the sermon into an alternative translation “God, you duped me”. We also sang Bunyan’s “To be a pilgrim” to a totally unfamiliar tune. The service was taken – and the sermon given – by the Bishop in Residence, and we had a setting which I did not know, by Healey Willan, an English born organist who emigrated to Toronto in the early 20^th century and is often thought of as Canadian. It is he – a keen whisky drinker – who when asked about his nationality replied “English by birth, Canadian by adoption and Scotch by absorption.

There was a lunch for Fathers’ Day but I was not invited so left. Quite a long walk through the drizzle, through a park, then through an Indian Muslim area, then, I think an Indian Hindu area and finally back to the hotel.

Owing to the severeness of the penalty I resisted the temptation on the way to feed the pigeons – $500 is rather a lot. Back to the hotel and a taxi for some sleep and then a taxi to Union Station. So I had seen very little of Chicago beyond the church and the walk. However, |I had been here in 2006 when England played a friendly match against the USA and had gone up the Sears Building, seen the lakeside and had visited the Board of Trade (CBOT being a big market in the oilseed world) so felt there was nothing more to look at.

Chicago to Boston.

The Lakeshore Limited does it from Chicago to Boston in 22 hours. This train is quite different from the others I had been on. The train was full and the majority of the passengers were going to intermediate stations. My first companion was a lady going to Bryan, Ohio. It was the first time she had ever taken a train and she had been to a family reunion in Chicago. There was a lady opposite with two young children who made a bed on the floor, with their heads sticking out at front and their legs under the seat. Their mother arranged a curtain to block off the corridor and, as with the other trains, they switched off the lights at 10 pm. However I was at the end, and they did not switch off the last light as it was necessary for the passage to the next coach. The lady with the children offered me their seats as they were not using them, and so I got some sleep – though the Amtrak guard did not like people moving around:” where’s the man who was sitting there?”.” Here – and don’t worry I moved my card” (with BOS on it) as well.

When I woke up, the lady for Bryan had gone, and it was time for breakfast. I met the chap from the Geneva UN again in the café car and we talked for a long time. On returning, my new companion was a postgraduate at University in Boston. She was Irish American. I mentioned about the Scots who seemed to have been popular as they spent huge sums on alcohol. She advised me (1) alcohol is much more expensive in Boston than elsewhere in the US (2) The people in Boston are a bit two-faced, so look out (3) I must have a lobster roll. They come hot or cold. The cold ones suck so I should go for a warm one. She was going to an earlier station (Boston Bay) while I continued to the end (Boston South), then a metro and a walk of about half an hour to Dave’s AirBnB in a neat and tidy residential district called Dorchester.

Boston

Boston had annoyed many of us before we even arrived there. I have already mentioned that about three months before the World Cup, they announced that on match days all public transport to the stadium, which is not in Boston, but at Foxborough, some 25 miles away, would be suspended, and the only transport to the stadium would be by special train, cost $80. This was just one of the many examples of price gouging which we have had in the tournament. If it was not enough to have ridiculously priced tickets, some 2-3 times more expensive than in the previous world cup, we were now being gouged for transport costs. The Boston authorities claimed that this was the cost of the trains and that they had not received any subsidies from FIFA to cope with this extra traffic, which they implied was a nuisance. In response to this, one of our members had organised three buses to take us to the ground, cost $30 – this would be at no profit to himself other than a free seat in return for organising the buses, and is the normal practice of our Supporters’ Club members. Then, the week before, the bus company had informed him that they were unable to supply the buses as they were “required by an authority”, and our money was returned. To add to this, Uber were saying they could not transport people to the ground. $80 in Boston, $100 in New York, but in Dallas the buses were free (as they had been at all other previous tournaments). So three cheers for Dallas and banana skins to the Irish wanabees of Boston and New York.

Determined not to let this miserable city have our cash, Dave booked an Uber to the Eagle Brook Saloon, a “wild west” type saloon, which brewed its own beer and was a mile and a half from the stadium. A few glasses of cider there and something to eat at normal prices and so off to the ground. Car parking at this stadium is over $100 and interestingly a lot of locals in the area were advertising their driveways and other spaces as “parking lots” for prices around $50. Apparently the stadium has tried to stop this but in my opinion they can’t do this. They would at least require a court order. In any event, it is a good example of how the market economy works and what happens when you are too greedy, which is what the Red Sox and FIFA both are.

Continuing the same theme beer in the ground is $16. This is a characterless freezing cold can of fizzy water called Michelob. Dave and Richard drank this stuff. I didn’t. I even joked with the seller who was shouting “Ice Cold Beer” that we were from England and he should sell more shouting “warm beer”.

The match was in keeping with the City. Frustrating, cold and dull. Ghana played a variety of what I call “anti-football” and others call “parking the bus” – in other words playing the entire team in defence as though you have parked a bus across the goalmouth. Added to this, our own football was dull and uncreative for at least the first 75 minutes, as we passed the ball from side to side to side to side and back again, just as we did under Southgate. Only in the last 15 minutes or so did we wake up, and by then it was too late as time wasting came into play. The hydration breaks – utterly ridiculous in 19 degrees and spitting rain – were roundly booed, and we had nice chants aimed at Thomas Party, the Ghanaian number 5 who is up on 7 different rape charges but was allowed to play as not yet convicted. We agreed – this match had a lot in common with the 0-0 draw against Algeria in Cape Town in 2010 when we booed the team off and Wayne Rooney said “nice to be booed by your own fans”.

A long walk round the ground after the match and a walk through the woods to the Eagle Brook saloon to watch Portugal destroy Uzbekistan and to drink a porter which I could only describe as alcoholic Christmas Pudding. Nice pub.

The next day Richard and Dave went off to Philadelphia. I had a nice walk through Dorchester to the metro. This is an area of compact weatherboarded houses, populated it would seem, from the shops and take-aways, almost entirely by Jamaicans, and I had a brief walk around the historic area of Boston. I missed the Tea party museum but had the lobster roll – very nice and a lot of lobster but $39 for the record including taxes, – which I ate in a small square outside Paul Revere’s house. I get a little weary of this “no taxation without representation” stuff and about how wonderful the Boston Tea Party was, and how heroic the Americans were. This is something of a distortion of events. It is true that the tea supplied by the East India Company was taxed. For that reason, the North American colonists tended to drink smuggled Dutch Tea. It was not taxation that brought about the tea party but, ironically, reduction of taxation. To clear excess stock at the East India company warehouses and to combat the smuggling, the British government reduced the tariffs on East India Company Tea to almost zero, thus rendering smuggling unprofitable. The rebels and smugglers of course did not like this and so revolted, using the fact that the taxes had been reduced as an implication that the British government had the right to tax the colonists. So the revolt was over a tax reduction – in fact it was instigated by the smugglers, but you won’t see that mentioned at any of the exhibitions.

The smugglers used the British reservation of the right to tax as an excuse to rouse fervour among the people, but it was the attack on smuggling more than anything else that was the main factor behind the revolt, not increases to tax. Paul Revere, whose house is pictured here, is credited with riding from Boston to warn the colonial militias before the Battles of Lexington and Concord, and he was also one of the characters who dressed up as Red Indians to dump the tea into Boston harbour. Longfellow then wrote a poem about this, adding to the story. I had asked Dave to suggest somewhere nice to go in between this and the Panama match and he suggested Cape Cod. This is a ferry ride of an hour and a half from Boston. The ferry to Providencetown on Cape Cod is not well signposted and I spent an hour and a half walking up and down the harbour asking at various offices where it went from and no one seemed to know. There were ferries to all kinds of places around the harbour but not to Providencetown. I decided to go to the address on the confirmation email and found it was somewhere I had walked past an hour before, went there and then passed a counter with “Boston Harbour cruises” on it. These operate the ferry. On fact to confuse things, there are two rival companies operating the ferry, and mine was leaving in an hour from Gate 4. The ferry was comfortable giving good views of the City and with an amusing Irish-American commentator. “Hold on to your hat” he said as I went upstairs to take pictures. As you can see, you get a fantastic view of the city from the ferry.

**Providencetown with Mayflower monument**

Providencetown is a hoot. Very arty-farty with a lot of paintings for sale on the pier along which you walk from the ferry. It would also appear to be one of the gay capitals of the US, with some characters straight out of Village people and rainbow flags everywhere. Of historical interest it has the monument to the Pilgrim Fathers who crossed the Atlantic on the Mayflower in 1620 and a lot of nice old buildings. It is however unbelievably expensive, and as I could not afford these prices, I was staying in a village called Eastham, at the Midway Motel, a bus ride of 45 minutes from Providencetown. At least the buses are free. The downside of this is that you can’t complain when they are late, which all of them were. My motel was appropriately midway between two stops, with a mile to one in each direction. A lovely cabin in the woods, where I spent two nights, and the only accommodation I could find for less than $100 a night. The owner was welcoming and helpful and even gave me a lift to the bus stop on the way back.

Down to a local bar in Eastham to watch Brazil beat Scotland 3-0. Poor old Scotland, they were simply not good enough. You should not pass the ball to a player such as Vinicius Junior 6 yards out and expect him not to score. And here was a defect of the expansion of the competition from 32 to 48 sides. The best 8 out of 12 third placed sides also qualify for the knock out phase. At this point Scotland were still in the best 8. They then slid slowly down the table to end on 20^th and the plane home. But from a point of view of the supporters trying to work out where to go and what to do, and even for the team, it was a nightmare. So the poor sweaties had to sweat it out for a few more days till they knew they were off home.. The next day I made a trip to P-Town as they all call it. 6 shrimps from a kiosk cost me $21. The same cider that was $6 in Eastham was $8 in the 1620 bar, where I watched Switzerland beat Canada. Otherwise there are a lot of small streets, a nice historic town hall and a lot of paintings and arty clothes shops. It is a pleasant place to walk around,. And there is wonderful seafood but beyond my budget. Then back to the Motel to watch Ecuador beat Germany. Ho, ho Schadenfreude über alles.

Back to P-town, ferry to Boston, then a walk through Boston to a small park outside the South station to watch Bafana Bafana (that is South Africa) beat South Korea. The elimination of South Korea was one of the surprises of the tournament. One of my Korean pupils says there has been controversy over their manager: they wanted a Korean manager not a foreigner and so chose one who had been a good player but was not so good as a manager. But to South Africa, who were one of the poorer sides, is a great disappointment for them. Some great individual players but not a team.

From Boston South I took the train to Wilmington, Delaware. This was about 6 hours, and I had around my seat an irritating Indian family with far too much luggage and three noisy children. No conversation and, appropriately, I read over half of my book for theis journey, Salman Rushdie’s “The Moor’s last sigh”. We were absolutely dead on time at Wilmington where I was met by Dave who took me to his house in Langenberg, Pennsylvania. This is a point where four states – Delaware, New Jersey, Marland and Pennsylvania converge. They deliberately chose Pennsylvania as it has better schools. That was all I saw of him on this visit as early the next morning he left for New York and the Panama match without me.

Here I had made the mistake of taking my brother’s advice. “Don’t buy a ticket for the Panama match, the prices will come down”. Our third match against Panama was to be played at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, capacity 88,000, “The group will already be decided, it’s lousy opposition and a big stadium”. This did not happen. The face value of the tickets was $220 and instead of coming down, the prices had gone up to a minimum of $700. So Dave went to New York alone, driving there, taking the Staten Island Ferry, then taking a bus organised by one of our members to avoid the $100 train tickets by the gougers in New York, and I was left with his wife, Donna and three daughters, Poppy (17) Ruby (14) and Ivy (8).

I have to say what a lovely house he has. Loads of space, a huge “man cave” downstairs (big screen, bar, fridge and pool table) nice rooms and a garden cut out of a forest with deer in it, lots of greenery, and all for the price of a semi in London. I made a bucket of Sangria for Donna (this relates to an old joke dating back to the 2006 World Cup when she came with us to one of the matches) and we watched the Panama match on Fox TV with one of her neighbours and drank the Sangria. Well, the first half was the same again as against Ghana. Defending, bus parking and unimaginative football from England. Then the second half and the two players we are relying on the most did it for us: Jude poked the ball in the net and five minutes later, Harry Kane did it. Phew. We have won the group and will most likely go to Mexico.

The third bottle on the flag is an even older standing joke, referring to the Euros in Portugal in 2004 when after the Switzerland match in Coimbra I drank 3 bottles of wine. The Wrexham crest is for me, Huddersfield and LA are for Dave, Reading for Donna and Richard’s (hidden deliberately) is Chester.

The next day was Sunday and I dragged my host out of bed to take me to a service at 7.45 a.m. at the Church of the Advent, at Kennet Square, about 4 or 5 miles away. Actually they recommended this church to me. The early service was said only and was what they call Rite 1 which appears to be a kind of mish mash of 1666 and some more recent revisions. On the way in I was accosted and welcomed by a chatty lady called Carrie. I mention this as the sermon was almost entirely about welcoming strangers – although the lesson was the almost sacrifice of Isaac, not Abraham welcoming the strangers – and I kept getting the feeling he was looking at me all the time. The vicar had a New Zealand accent and was actually standing in. “Well you passed the test”, I told Carrie at the end of the service, which was quite well attended despite the hour. In fact, I was then accosted by another lady who was not a regular but had come over from another town nearby, and we walked together afterwards almost back to Kennet Square where her husband picked her up in a truck.

Group stage

So that completes the Group stage and the first half of the World Cup. We have spent three weeks deciding which countries would not have qualified under the old rules. Surprises – elimination of South Korea and Uruguay, also advancement of Cabo Verde, one of the delights of the tournament, also Canada, South Africa and Saudi Arabia. It is possible to see what FIFA is doing with this expansion of the cup even if you do not approve of it. They are charging as high a price as they can for tickets, and largely they are getting away with it. We have a tournament of two halves – the countries likely to be eliminated, and the income streams associated with them are in the cup for longer. Everyone is here for at least three weeks, so more payers, more countries, higher income, and everyone pays up willingly. FIFA are aware that everyone despises them, but they just don’t care. They say that the profits get “reinvested in grass roots football” but these are profits after deducting huge salaries and bonuses to themselves.

The second half is the knock out phase, but far more countries which would never usually get through have done so, so the income streams from them continue. More importantly for the competition, the three host nations have all got through, which is quite something in the case of Canada. The most unsatisfactory part is the grading of the third placed sides. Not only does it leave them in limbo, as Scotland were for three days, but also the supporters cannot plan where to go and the clubs playing them do not know who their opponents will be till the last minute. For example, at various stages England were going to play Senegal, Uzbekistan, Algeria, Colombia, even Portugal, before finally getting the country the commentators keep calling “Deeyar Congo”. In my case, a break, as I always planned to miss the first knock out match to make a side trip to California to see my sister.

Californian interlude and Round of 32

No “airport effect this time. Philadelphia is a large but well organised airport. Flight to St Louis and a wait of 4 hours, and then another 4 hours to San Francisco. My only gripe with South West Airlines is that they have closed windows on the plane as a default and few people open them so I saw very little from my middle seats and spent 6 hours inside two enclosed tubes.

I had 5 days with Angela in Emerald Hills near Redwood City. We went on two walks through the Redwood Forests in Edgewood Park and one along the cliffs near Half Moon Bay, while I went for two other walks in Edgewood Park. We also visited Stanford Universiry. The Memorial Chuch with its Fisk organ was closed for repairs, so all pictures were from the outside.

Raven with snake. Copying the Mexican flag?

The high spot of the trip was a concert given by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra at the Davies Hall in San Fransisco, where we heard Max Bruch’s violin concerto – one of our stepfather’s favourite pieces – and the Mendelssohn “Reformation” Symphony. The concerto was played by a superb virtuoso Taiwanese violinist called Paul Huang.

So those games of the Round of 32 which I saw were on TV. Our match against “Deeyar” Congo was an enormous banana skin. For a start, our defence was terrible and let in their goal, – which was fully deserved. Then we seemed to be lacking in creativity and Congo seemed to have found the black Tomaszewszki as their goalkeeper made save after save, until Harry Kane rescued us again, as he has done so many times. Phew. Banana skin avoided.

It is depressing to read UK newspaper reports of our games. I am sure no other country in the competition has journalists who regularly dump on their own side. “England scrape through” was the gist of most headlines. Yet when Belgium scraped through against Senegal it was a “remarkable comeback”.

The Round of 32 had more examples of what I call “anti-football” where a weaker side plays for penalties. The first was South Africa v Canada, where two of the worst teams in the tournament were playing each other, and South Africa were playing for 0-0 and penalties. This didn’t work as Canada’s goal in the 92nd minute provided the only spark of the match, and so Canada progress to the last 16 and Rob Macilhenny at least was happy. Next Paraguay did the same thing against Germany, actually defending very well, and then defeating the Germans on penalties – something which has never happened before. The Paraguay penalties were well taken and had obviously been well rehearsed. The Dutch on the other hand deserved to go out with three appalling misses during the shoot out with Morocco.

Other moments of the round: the gallant Cape Verde Islands team gave the Argies an almighty fright as they “scraped through” into the next round. Australia played well but, like the Dutch, deserved to go out for dreadful penalty misses: in modern football you have to practice and practice these, which the Egyptians had done, but the Aussies hadn’t. Next, the USA’s win and the controversial sending off of Balogun. My view was that he was unlucky: it was not intentional but was still a nasty foul. Oh, and a marvellous moment when Martinez took Ronaldo off. Kudos to Martinez for doing that and stressing that the team is more important than any individual. Ronaldo thinks it is all about him with 10 players attached. Well, he apparently had 4 touches of the ball all match, one of which was his penalty. His substitute Ramos was on the park for a few minutes and scored the winner.

And so off to Mexico for our Round of 16 match.