Pinnacle

Moscow July 15th 2018. The World Cup Final. And we’re here. Or at least in the vicinity. The big one; football’s pinnacle. Every little boys dream. Certainly mine since Joe Jordan headed the winner for Scotland against Czechoslovakia all those years ago. So I cant deny – I was pretty excited.

An added perk of our fancy pants tickets in Sochi was entry to the FIFA Match House Hospitality Center in Moscow. We set off early and found the House nestled beside the river overlooking yet another mind blowing gold tipped orthodox cathedral.

Not a bad place to warm up for the game; we thought. But it turned out that we were about the only ones that showed up. FIFA had limited the access to the lunch as they were preparing for the end of tournament party that evening. 1,000 invited FIFA staff to watch the game and party into the night. The setting and the facility were spectacular. We tried to blag our way in. But they smiled politely and said “NO”.

I guess we’ll just head on over and watch it at the FIFA FanFest. LOL: pretty good fall back plan we thought. It started out well. We descended into the metro just as a train full of Croatians pulled in. Hysterical. What a crowd.

This one Russian lady was quite taken by all the attention. Suddenly she was 20 years younger again 😊 But Dave in yellow, nearly drowned in the Croatian Sea.

The Croatians got off at stadium station and we trundled on another couple stops to the Fanfest. A quiet fell over the carriage and, unusually, stayed with us all the way into the ground. Very odd. Not the party, the carnival of nations we’d experienced yesterday in St. Petersburg. Just a procession of folks walking quietly up the street to the game. Yeah: odd. Maybe an indication of things to come.

The crowd was quiet, but it was huge. It was the first we’d seen the security forces step in to control a crowd situation. Pretty well done actually, but they clearly weren’t in the mood for a laugh or a joke. They said the capacity of the venue was 25,000. But it felt like many, many more – we guessed 100,000. But the facilities were clearly designed for the stated capacity with lines and crushes for everything. And still the crowd was so quiet. Most weren’t fans. They just came along ‘cos something big was going on. Any French or Croatians, as we’d seen on the train, would, and possibly did, give their right arm for a ticket to the stadium to see the game live. So there were few real fans here and the lack of enthusiasm dampened things.

Then the sky darkened to the south and lighting crackled, seemingly striking the park just beyond the tree line. The crowd was still pretty laid back but the mood was sombre. We couldn’t have got out even if we’d wanted to. Amazingly the lightning flashed all around, but didn’t strike the crowd. Maybe 100,000 people creates its own energy field. We tried to concentrate on the game but it was difficult with one eye on the sky and jostling for a glimpse of big screen among thousands of bobbing heads. We stayed with it till half time but really didn’t have a feel for the game. After the interval we moved around searching for a better, safer view to no success. And when it got to 4:1 France, we decided it was time to leave. Sadly, the Cup final was not to be the grand occasion we’d dreamed of.

The exit spit us out of the crowd at an unfamiliar location and we walked for a long time with the many other early leavers searching for a metro station. Above us the sky still threatened. Eventually we reached Leninskya Prospekt a grand junction of several roads with typically massive statue as its its centerpiece. Iron Man was all we could think!

In the distance the crowds roar announced that France were the World Cup champions. I was happy for them. In this Cup, I think the two most consistent, most balanced teams made it to the final. I’d have been happy for either to win. I’ll watch the game on TV to form a better opinion when I get home. I heard later that the sky did eventually open on the stadium and the FanFest. But by then we were underground!