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| Version 1 | Version 2 |
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| Message to the English: come to Russia and feel the love | Message to the English: come to Russia and feel the love |
| (5 months later) | |
| This. World. Cup. Is. Good. Having been lucky enough to be at Nizhny Novgorod for England 6 Panama 1 (stick that in your hats), St Petersburg for Argentina 2 Nigeria 1 (Messi’s foot of God) and Kaliningrad for Belgium against England (the game was literally pointless), I get to write in the Guardian to say my personal experience is that Russia is absolutely killing this World Cup, which is a vast improvement on spies in Zizzi*. The organisation of this tournament has been fantastic and you’ll struggle to find anyone who’ll say otherwise, which is not because they’re a double-agent or a Twitter bot, but because it’s true. | This. World. Cup. Is. Good. Having been lucky enough to be at Nizhny Novgorod for England 6 Panama 1 (stick that in your hats), St Petersburg for Argentina 2 Nigeria 1 (Messi’s foot of God) and Kaliningrad for Belgium against England (the game was literally pointless), I get to write in the Guardian to say my personal experience is that Russia is absolutely killing this World Cup, which is a vast improvement on spies in Zizzi*. The organisation of this tournament has been fantastic and you’ll struggle to find anyone who’ll say otherwise, which is not because they’re a double-agent or a Twitter bot, but because it’s true. |
| Stop knocking the World Cup’s female commentators. They know their stuff | Lianne Sanderson | |
| Newspaper headlines “Bloodthirsty hooligans vow murder”, “Russian Ultras: KID BOOTCAMP” and “Russian hooligans warn England fans ‘prepare to DIE’’’. A BBC documentary called Russia’s Hooligan Army. A Foreign Office warning of “heightened risks of violence”. What do these things have in common? Well, they all sound like things Ross Kemp would mumble in his sleep, but they are also UK media reports that put a lot of English people off having an experience like mine and having the opportunity to experience first-hand which country puts us out on penalties. | Newspaper headlines “Bloodthirsty hooligans vow murder”, “Russian Ultras: KID BOOTCAMP” and “Russian hooligans warn England fans ‘prepare to DIE’’’. A BBC documentary called Russia’s Hooligan Army. A Foreign Office warning of “heightened risks of violence”. What do these things have in common? Well, they all sound like things Ross Kemp would mumble in his sleep, but they are also UK media reports that put a lot of English people off having an experience like mine and having the opportunity to experience first-hand which country puts us out on penalties. |
| It’s so trite to say the people have been amazing (it annoys me when people come back from a country and say “the people were amazing”, it’s like, come on, they can’t all have been amazing, there had to be at least one dickhead in Mozambique) but the response of the Russian populace to England fans has been the polar opposite of what we were told to guard against. Mark Roberts, head of UK football policing, warned against taking England flags to Russia for fear of being too imperialistic and inciting violence. He might have felt a little silly in Victory Square, Kaliningrad, with St George’s crosses draped over every inch of the U Gasheka pub, native onlookers cheering along to the Umbro-clad mire of English lager-lads singing adapted Atomic Kitten songs (“Southgate you’re the one, you still turn me on … football’s coming home again”). If flags are universally signals of peremptory intent, tell that to the Russian teenager who asked all the fans he met to sign his with where they were from. Desecrating the sacred colours of the motherland with “Jeff, Grimsby” doesn’t get you put in a gulag, apparently. | It’s so trite to say the people have been amazing (it annoys me when people come back from a country and say “the people were amazing”, it’s like, come on, they can’t all have been amazing, there had to be at least one dickhead in Mozambique) but the response of the Russian populace to England fans has been the polar opposite of what we were told to guard against. Mark Roberts, head of UK football policing, warned against taking England flags to Russia for fear of being too imperialistic and inciting violence. He might have felt a little silly in Victory Square, Kaliningrad, with St George’s crosses draped over every inch of the U Gasheka pub, native onlookers cheering along to the Umbro-clad mire of English lager-lads singing adapted Atomic Kitten songs (“Southgate you’re the one, you still turn me on … football’s coming home again”). If flags are universally signals of peremptory intent, tell that to the Russian teenager who asked all the fans he met to sign his with where they were from. Desecrating the sacred colours of the motherland with “Jeff, Grimsby” doesn’t get you put in a gulag, apparently. |
| And if this all sounds too magical to be true, that’s how it felt. When numerous Russians asked why we were being told not to come to their country – once phrasing it heartbreakingly as, “Why don’t you like us?” – I initially worried it was some sort of state edict that Putin had issued into their mind-chips to trick us. But it quickly became obvious that it was I, plagued with worries of being attacked if I donned an England shirt, who had been operating in a fantasy of disinformation. My first Airbnb host said how happy he was to meet an Englishman, as his favourite author was Stephen Fry and described how he’d very much enjoyed the BBC adaptation of War and Peace, and that Russians felt a great affinity for the British as they also had a great empire in the past but are now far less powerful and in somewhat of an identity crisis in the present. I tried to return the compliment but am so poorly read I settled for saying it was great when Andrei Arshavin scored four goals for Arsenal at Anfield. | And if this all sounds too magical to be true, that’s how it felt. When numerous Russians asked why we were being told not to come to their country – once phrasing it heartbreakingly as, “Why don’t you like us?” – I initially worried it was some sort of state edict that Putin had issued into their mind-chips to trick us. But it quickly became obvious that it was I, plagued with worries of being attacked if I donned an England shirt, who had been operating in a fantasy of disinformation. My first Airbnb host said how happy he was to meet an Englishman, as his favourite author was Stephen Fry and described how he’d very much enjoyed the BBC adaptation of War and Peace, and that Russians felt a great affinity for the British as they also had a great empire in the past but are now far less powerful and in somewhat of an identity crisis in the present. I tried to return the compliment but am so poorly read I settled for saying it was great when Andrei Arshavin scored four goals for Arsenal at Anfield. |
| Yes, there are clearly problems in Russia with racism, homophobia and hooliganism that as a straight, white man weren’t likely to impact my trip. For a country avowedly impressed with the British culture of 30 years ago, one wonders where the Russians got such ideas. But those issues seemed as irrelevant to this World Cup as Britain’s plundering of Iraq’s oil or the troubling treatment of migrants were from the 2012 Olympics. The experience of being a football fan in Russia, not just for me but for the Senegalese, Nigerians, Panamanians and BAME people I was tolerating Fifa’s godless fan-parks with, was so surprising and thrilling as to be soul-enriching. | Yes, there are clearly problems in Russia with racism, homophobia and hooliganism that as a straight, white man weren’t likely to impact my trip. For a country avowedly impressed with the British culture of 30 years ago, one wonders where the Russians got such ideas. But those issues seemed as irrelevant to this World Cup as Britain’s plundering of Iraq’s oil or the troubling treatment of migrants were from the 2012 Olympics. The experience of being a football fan in Russia, not just for me but for the Senegalese, Nigerians, Panamanians and BAME people I was tolerating Fifa’s godless fan-parks with, was so surprising and thrilling as to be soul-enriching. |
| The World Cup is the antidote to the sewage lapping at our ankles | Alex Clark | |
| Huge congratulations must go to the law enforcement that’s been put in place to stop both the most fighty Russians and the most fighty English from making their presence felt. But those responsible for the headlines with TOO MANY CAPITAL LETTERS should be ashamed. Not just for denying England fans these experiences, but for allowing the Russian people to feel demonised, and indeed for allowing Putin to capitalise on this othering of the Russian people to support his us-against-them narrative. Every English person that has a positive interaction with a Russian person is a step further away from letting the people in power turn us against each other ... is what I drunkenly mumbled into Anastasia’s ear a few minutes before I learned she had a husband, and a few minutes after she’d said there are no good computer hackers in Russia, and about 20 minutes after I’d been singing “Football’s coming home”. We’re all living in our own fantasies I suppose. | Huge congratulations must go to the law enforcement that’s been put in place to stop both the most fighty Russians and the most fighty English from making their presence felt. But those responsible for the headlines with TOO MANY CAPITAL LETTERS should be ashamed. Not just for denying England fans these experiences, but for allowing the Russian people to feel demonised, and indeed for allowing Putin to capitalise on this othering of the Russian people to support his us-against-them narrative. Every English person that has a positive interaction with a Russian person is a step further away from letting the people in power turn us against each other ... is what I drunkenly mumbled into Anastasia’s ear a few minutes before I learned she had a husband, and a few minutes after she’d said there are no good computer hackers in Russia, and about 20 minutes after I’d been singing “Football’s coming home”. We’re all living in our own fantasies I suppose. |
| * Allegedly. My Airbnb host Timofey would not enjoy this joke. | * Allegedly. My Airbnb host Timofey would not enjoy this joke. |
| •Tom Rosenthal is an actor and comedian best known for his roles in Friday Night Dinner and Plebs | •Tom Rosenthal is an actor and comedian best known for his roles in Friday Night Dinner and Plebs |
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