I watch a lot of lower-level football, quite often where the players are unpaid and the crowds are in double figures at best. Sometimes though, it’s good to watch the game at an elite level and it doesn’t get much more elite than a World Cup. Paul and I had been to the last three World Cups and I’d been looking forward to this tournament since the hosting nation was announced. Russia has always seemed to me to be a ‘proper’ football country, particularly in the Soviet days with Lev Yashin in his black kit and Oleg Blokhin in a CCCP tracksuit.
If the tournament itself wasn’t elite enough, we’d struck lucky in the draw for a change and our first game pitched Costa Rica against Brazil. How good was that? Watching Brazil in a World Cup moves eliteness up to a whole new level. I’ve a bit of a soft spot for Brazil. I suppose most people do. I’d like to say it dates from the Juninho era at the Boro, but I can remember wearing a Brazil shirt in ’94 to cheer them on to their fourth star in a variety of Edinburgh pubs.
Paul and I flew into Saint Petersburg the day before the game. Immigration went super-smoothly with our Fan-Ids serving as visas and after a taxi journey in drizzling rain we were at our hotel next to the Niva River. We had good views of some old buildings and we were in time to catch the second half of the France v Peru game in one of the hotel bars.
In addition to showing the match on the telly, the hotel also seemed to be hosting some sort of ‘Russia’s Got Talent’ style competition in a curtained-off section of the room. The curtain provided little protection against the loud drumming that accompanied most acts and so we headed off out in search of somewhere more suitable for the 9pm game between Argentina and Croatia.
A bar around the corner proved to be a better venue with the game up on a couple of big screens, local beer at under two quid a pint, sausage and cheese for snacks and a forlorn bloke in an Argie shirt at odds with the rest of the bar who seemed to delight in the Croatian win.
We left not long after the final whistle and with twilight closing in picked up a couple of bottles of cider from a window in a wall to finish the evening off.
Next morning was match day and as an app on Paul’s phone suggested that stadium was an hour and forty minutes away on foot, we thought we’d set off about eleven and take in the sights on the way to the ground. It all started well. We passed numerous historic looking buildings and saw plenty of fans milling around.
After an hour or so there were fewer people in replica shirts and we were out in the suburbs. The architecture from a hundred and fifty years ago had given way to Soviet era apartment blocks and more modern-day high-rise buildings.
After two hours of walking and with another two to go to kick-off, Paul decided to check that the ground we were walking to and were still more than half an hour away from, really was the World Cup Stadium. Well, what do you know? It wasn’t. We’d just spent two hours walking towards the an old stadium where nobody, least of all the Brazil team, was appearing. The confusion appears to be due to the correct location having a variety of names ranging from the Arena Stadium to the Zenit Stadium by way of the Saint Petersburg Stadium or the Krestovsky Stadium. I’ve a feeling that we had been well on the way to the old Zenit ground rather than the new one. It would have been nice to have seen it, but not, I suppose, at the expense of a World Cup game.
Fortunately Paul’s app gave us directions to the correct ground that involved a few stops on a bus and a couple of subway rides, enabling us to arrive with fifty minutes to spare.
The access to the ground was managed by a one-way circuit. As we made our way towards the gates, there were frequent chants from Brazilians, Costa Ricans and neutrals alike revelling in the misfortune of Argentina the previous evening.
“Di Maria, Ciao! Mascherano, Ciao! Messi, Ciao, Messi, Ciao, Messi, Ciao, Ciao, Ciao!”
The queues at our gate were well-marshalled and whilst I did see riot police loitering, they kept a low profile and left the crowd management to stewards. In order to get through the turnstile you had to have the bar code on your Fan-Id scanned and then the bar code on your ticket.
With your photo on the Fan-Id and your name on both, the system looks to have killed touting stone-dead. In contrast to every other tournament I’ve been to where tickets have been readily available, I didn’t see anyone trying to off-load spares and I only noticed one person looking to buy.
Once inside, we got a couple of Buds. Whilst I’m appreciative of FIFA’s stance on selling alcohol and their willingness to allow it to be swigged in the stands, I’d like it a whole lot better if they could find a better global beer partner. Or, if it’s all about the marketing, just sell something decent in a Budweiser cup.
Our Category One seats at two hundred and ten dollars a pop were half-way up the upper tier, about level with one of the goals. We were a long way from the pitch but the fairly steep incline in the stands helped a little with the view.
I’m not sure how the ticket allocation was organised. We’d bought our tickets blind before the draw, but the stadium was probably half full of Brazilian fans, or at least spectators in Brazil shirts. There were random small blocks of Costa Ricans, each one maybe two or three hundred strong.
The lack of segregation made for an unusual atmosphere. We had Costa Ricans in the row behind us, with Brazilians to the right and left. These fans ignored each other and took the safer option of taunting rivals ten or twenty yards away instead. The Brazilians struck me as being quite arrogant, frequently pointing to the stars on their shirts or holding up five fingers and a clenched fist to highlight the difference in the historical achievements of the two sides.
Both fans were united however in their condemnation of anything they didn’t like with a cry of “Puta” or one of its variants. No matter what irked them the instant response was to suggest that the perpetrator or his Mam was on the game. It’s all a bit tiresome really.
Mind you, I was tempted to sling a few insults myself at whoever had decided that Brazil would wear blue shirts. It’s Brazil FFS and if I’m finally going to see them I want the full experience with the iconic kit. There’s nothing wrong with the blue shirt but it’s like when, say, The Waterboys don’t sing their ‘Whole Of The Moon’ song. Perfectly acceptable if you see them fairly often, but if it’s your one and maybe only time, you want to hear their hit.
The performance of the five-times champions wasn’t much better than their choice of shirt. They were cagey in the first half, with Willian getting the hook at the break for as less a Brazilian performance as you could imagine. They were a bit more forceful in the second half but it took until injury time for them to get the opener, quickly followed by a victory-confirming second goal, much to the delight of the fella to our right.
There was a walk through the woods to the subway after the game where foam-handed volunteers were positioned to high-five the departing fans. We had been intending to call into the Fan Fest but the queues were a little on the long side so we popped into a nearby hotel instead for the second half of the Nigeria v Iceland game and then headed back to the bar we’d been in the previous night for Switzerland and Serbia.
After what could have been a disastrous trip to the wrong ground, it turned out to be a pretty decent day in the end.
Trail of the Lion King 