In this line of work, you’re taught to be cynical and contrarian. So when Gianni Infantino, the FIFA President, says “Today I am a happy man … as far as I am concerned, we all fell in love with Russia,” you want to blow holes in it.
It’s very easy to do. From the way the World Cup even got to Russia (remember the “destroyed” computers?), to the state-sponsored doping program that gutted the country’s Olympic medal count and led to a lifetime ban for the minister of sport and former head of the Russian FA, Vitaly Mutko, to the fact that it smacked of classic bread and circuses fare.
Give the people a show and they won’t bother asking questions about corruption (Transparency International ranks Russia 135th out of 180 nations, substantially lower than Brazil or South Africa), downed Malaysian airliners and dissidents who keep going in and out of jail.
The latter are valid issues — and there are a host of others — but they belong to a political sphere, not a sporting one. The former are sporting issues and there remain unanswered questions (and unprosecuted individuals), but they are just one facet of Russia. What Infantino was talking about — you hope — was the way a nation rolled out the red carpet for the world and bent over backwards for visitors over more than a month of football.
Did we fall in love? Or were we just seduced into a one-month stand?
What’s the difference? The difference is legacy. What do we take from this and what is left behind for Russia, or, at a minimum, for the Russian whom this World Cup touched.
Many Russians I spoke to, both expats and Muscovites, drew parallels prior to the tournament with the 1980 Moscow Olympics, the first behind what was then the Iron Curtain. It was seen by many as a seminal event, one where ordinary Russians welcomed the world and, for the first time in decades, felt a part of it, despite the fact that 66 nations boycotted the Games in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Reading contemporaneous reports from western media at the time, it’s striking how much they echoed those of Russia 2018. Smiling volunteers, beautiful state-of-the-art facilities, surgically clean streets and a welcoming population battling gamely through language barriers and a Cyrillic alphabet that makes menus and subway signs tricky.