1) VAR: a change of heart
This hasn’t been an easy talking point to write. But maybe, in the end, it’s not you. It’s us. The experience of Video Assistant Refereeing in the English season had only pointed one way at this World Cup. The endless delays while a middle-aged man fiddles with his ear. The jeers in the stadium. The complete absence of any information. It all felt like something that would diminish decisively the primary experience of the stadium-going fan. But in Russia it has actually worked well. A quick sprint off to check a screen. Decisions made in seconds not minutes. Less fussicking and prancing about and super-officious officialdom. VAR has prevented rather than created controversy, and has stilled the tedious chunter about decisions, so often a last resort for those who would rather not analyse the actual game. If it does nothing else World Cup VAR has saved us from the grisly spectacle of Neymar’s backward dive against Costa Rica being rewarded with a match-turning penalty. If it makes him stay on his feet just a little more, everyone wins. And meanwhile English football take note. It doesn’t have to be an enormous VAR palaver after all. Barney Ronay
2) Free-scoring England must still improve service for Kane
There has been only one other World Cup, in 1966, when England have scored more than their current total of eight goals. Harry Kane has five of them, putting him at the top of the list for the Golden Boot, and meaning Gary Lineker is the only England player in history to have scored more World Cup goals. Yet the strange thing is that Kane’s team-mates have found it unusually difficult to provide him with chances from open play. Two of Kane’s goals have come from penalties, one was a fluke and the other two arrived from corners. That apart, it is difficult to think of a clear chance for Kane. If his team-mates can start picking him out, it may be that the World Cup has not actually seen the best of Kane yet. Daniel Taylor
3) Travel can unearth the most poignant of family tales
Following your team around the globe occasionally conjures wondrous stories of coincidence. Staying at the Oka hotel in Nizhny Novgorod was an England supporter whose mother, recently passed away, hailed from the once-closed city around 250 miles east of Moscow. She had left for north London in 1946 and would never return, with her son having pledged to visit her birthplace in her stead. That England’s schedule would take them back to Nizhny, formerly Gorky, was already a stroke of luck, but the fan had actually discovered, much to his amazement, that the address where his mother had lived was virtually opposite the hotel allocated to him by his travel company. And, what is more, the building is still occupied by someone bearing her maiden name. His next mission is to meet, face to face, the cousin he never knew he had. The football almost felt like a sideshow to the main event. Dominic Fifield
4) No such thing as a wasted trip for Peru and Egypt fans
How do you measure your World Cup experience? For the number of countries whose elimination is guaranteed after two games, with no points and in some cases not even a goal to cheer so far, the football side of things clearly can’t have been a highlight. But spending time in the cities where the likes of Egypt and Peru have been out in force to support and represent their nation, there is a tangible sense that they will go home from Russia feeling they’ve had the opposite of a worthless trip. Maybe it has something to do with the length of the wait to experience something like this. It has been 28 years for Egypt and 36 for Peru. Their joy at throwing themselves into the party, their emotions at singing their national anthems and waving their flags, the fervour with which they supported teams as they went out fighting, meant something in itself. Amy Lawrence
5) Passions run high and show international game still matters
There is a school of thought that Neymar was laying it on a bit thick when he burst into tears after Brazil’s late win over Costa Rica but in one sense his lachrymosity was good to see. Whatever you think of the Paris Saint-Germain forward’s solipsism, he is clearly desperate to succeed at a World Cup and it is a counterpoint to any suggestions that this competition does not hold the allure of old to its star participants. “These tears are from happiness, overcoming obstacles, grit and will to win,” he wrote on Instagram after his outburst. What we have seen in the past week and a half – from Neymar’s emotion to Germany’s wild celebrations against Sweden, the pile-ons whenever England score and the atmosphere of intense hostility when Switzerland faced Serbia – is that international football still stirs passions like no other form of the sport. It is easy to get sniffy about some of the quality on show but that is to miss the point that World Cups have always appealed more to the visceral than the cerebral. A group stage full of incident and tension suggests reports of the tournament’s ill health have been exaggerated. Nick Ames
6) Bierhoff pours fuel on the fire
Germany will never forget Toni Kroos’s sensational 95th-minute free-kick that sunk Sweden and rekindled their World Cup hopes. But Sweden must move on quickly from the pain, which was compounded by the way that the German bench gloated in the red-raw aftermath of full-time. “It was disgusting behaviour from the Germans, a total lack of respect,” said the midfielder, Emil Forsberg, and he was not the only Swede to offer up emotional sound-bites. Janne Andersson, the manager, was fuming during the post-match melee and he could not keep a lid on it during his press conference. “People behaved in ways that you do not do,” Andersson said. Sweden can still qualify by beating Mexico and their focus has now turned to that. One tip for them – avoid listening to Oliver Bierhoff, who is a member of Joachim Löw’s Germany staff. “The fact is that Sweden’s negative way of playing and so much time-wasting doesn’t deserve to be rewarded,” Bierhoff said. David Hytner
7) Shaqiri and Xhaka mix football with politics
There was more gloating when Switzerland recorded their 2-1 victory over Serbia but this time there was rather more to it. A bit of background. Xherdan Shaqiri and Granit Xhaka are ethnic Albanians with their roots in Kosovo, where a Serbian crackdown on the Albanian population only ended with Nato military intervention in 1999. Shaqiri was born in Kosovo but his family were forced to flee to Switzerland when he was a baby due to conflict while Xhaka was born in Switzerland – his parents having also fled there from Kosovo. “My uncle’s house burned down and our house was left standing but everything had been stolen or broken and the walls were sprayed,” Shaqiri has said. Xhaka’s father had been a political prisoner for three-and-a-half years, having committed the crime of demonstrating in favour of Kosovarian democratic rights against the communist central government in Belgrade. When Shaqiri and Xhaka scored the goals against Serbia, they made the sign of the Albanian double-headed eagle. Fifa may discipline them for provoking the general public. After what their families lived through, they would surely do it again. DH
8) United by football – and parkrunning
By the eternal flame, there is a vast statue of the unknown soldier, stretched prone, his right arm reaching out towards an unseen finish line. About 100 yards away, a gaggle of runners engage in a slightly awkward group warm-up while a terrier called Phoebe scurries about in a frenzy of excitement. This is the Kazan parkrun and, like so much else in Russia this month, the World Cup has made it a little different. Parkrunning is a phenomenon that began in Bushy Park, Teddington, in October 2004. The idea is simple: a timed 5km run on a properly measured course, the ethos being very much about participation rather than competition. It has proved wildly successful, and now stretches to 1,533 parks across 20 countries. A subculture of “parkrun tourists” has developed, as runners “collect” races along various themes. More than 20 runners, for instance, have ticked off all 52 London parkruns, while a recent trend is to try to complete a list of parkruns starting with every letter of the alphabet (apart from X; there are no Xs). Zs, understandably, are prized, which is why one visitor from London made the trip to Zhukovsky, about 25 miles from Moscow, on the Saturday before the World Cup began. The Kazan parkrun began in April 2015. It features a brutal hill in the middle of each of its two laps, and attracts an average of 29 runners. On Saturday, there were 38, at least five of them British, including Simon Marland, the secretary of Bolton Wanderers, who came a highly creditable fourth. The week before, there had been around 30 Australians. The local reaction was bemused but welcoming, as the World Cup does its job of bringing different cultures of together. Jonathan Wilson
9) Will Van Marwijk resist Australia’s Cahill-craving?
The front page of Saturday’s Herald Sun wondered “Time for Cahill?” The Australian asked “Forget Wally – where’s Timmy?” After one point and two games in which their only goals have been Mile Jedinak penalties, Australia seems to be losing patience and wants a return to what it knows. And more than anything it knows Tim Cahill. He may be 38-years-old, hasn’t started a game of any description since November and hasn’t scored a club goal since April 2017, but there’s still seemingly a big part of the Australian psyche that can’t let go. Which isn’t a surprise: this is Australia’s fifth World Cup, the first being in 1974 and Cahill has scored in the other three. It must feel weird for him not to be starting. But he’s stayed on the bench for their opening two games and apparently not happy about it either: will the unflaggingly stubborn Bert van Marwijk give in to the clamour? Nick Miller
10) Russia can support Russia again
Russia’s 3-1 victory over Egypt put the debate to rest: their defeat of Saudi Arabia wasn’t just a fluke. The Russian team have gelled unexpectedly well, dissecting a flawed Egyptian side that nonetheless boasted a threat in Liverpool star Mo Salah. Behind the winger Denis Cheryshev, the rising star Aleksandr Golovin, and the surprisingly spry Artem Dzyuba, Russians are also joking about it coming home. It’s a sea change from the mood before the World Cup when this side was said to be the worst in the country’s history. And the press let them know it. “I’m a little bit surprised that the national team continued to speak to the media at all because it was a really bad attitude from the press and from the fans,” Igor Rabiner, a popular Russian sportswriter, told me last week. Russia’s first real test, Uruguay, will come on Monday. If the team continues to play as they have, they’ve a fighting chance. And the country will be behind them. Andrew Roth
