The Russia World Cup 2018 is just hours away and the excitement is palpable. The teams are arriving, England have posed for their send-off picture and the first whistle is only days away.
Here's our guide on how to watch every second of the action. From this Thursday, we will be in for a feast of pretty much non-stop football.
Last December's draw put England in Group G with Belgium, Tunisia and Panama and the good news is that all three of the games have been scheduled at sociable times. You can hear the sighs of relief from office bosses all around the country.
The full World Cup 2018 fixture schedule is included below, with timings, venues and TV channels included.
All times BST. Local times are BST +2 apart from games played in Kaliningrad (+1), Samara (+3) and Ekaterinburg (+4).
Group stages
Thursday 14 June
Russia vs Saudi Arabia (Group A) - Moscow (Luzhniki) - 4pm - ITV
Friday 15 June
Egypt vs Uruguay (Group A) - Ekaterinburg - 1pm - BBC
Morocco vs Iran (Group B) - St Petersburg - 4pm - ITV
Portugal vs Spain (Group B) - Sochi - 7pm - BBC
Saturday 16 June
France vs Australia (Group C) - Kazan - 11am - BBC
What time is the World Cup opening ceremony?
The curtain for the 2018 World Cup will be raised on the tournament at 3:30pm (BST) on Thursday June 14, just 30 minutes before the opening game between Russia and Saudi Arabia.
Where is the opening ceremony?
At Moscow's Luzhniki Stadium which will also host the final.
There will also be a concert held in the city's famous Red Square concurrently with the opening ceremony.
What will the opening ceremony involve?
The event will focus on a series of musical acts, with Robbie Williams headlining.
Around 500 dancers, gymnasts and trampolinists will also be performing in an opening extravaganza that will pay homage to all things Russian.
Who will be performing with Robbie Williams?
England will have representation in the opening ceremony in the form of 90s pop icon, Robbie Williams.
Williams, who helped mastermind another edition of Soccer Aid for Unicef, will perform for the capacity crowd inside the Luzhniki Stadium and millions more watching on around the world.
“I’m so happy and excited to be going back to Russia for such a unique performance. I’ve done a lot in my career, and opening the FIFA World Cup to 80,000 football fans in the stadium and many millions all over the world is a boyhood dream,” said Williams.
It’s the eve of the World Cup 2018 with the eyes of the globe turning towards Russia.
It promises to be an action-packed, drama-filled month as 736 players from 32 nations arrive for a feast of football. Brazil, Spain and Germany arrive as tournament favourites with Gareth Southgate's England heading in with plenty of hope if not much expectation. They face Tunisia in Volgograd on Monday before taking on Panama and Belgium in Group G.
The Three Lions are settling in in Repino having arrived yesterday, with the tournament kicking off in earnest on Thursday afternoon when the hosts face Saudi Arabia.
We will have all the latest news, views, pictures and video direct from Russia throughout the day as we build up to the biggest football tournament in the world.
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The Russian prazdnik – celebration – must not be ruined at any price as hosts prepare to give enemies five-star treatment
'We're just trying to survive it': Russian cities brace for World Cup
'We're just trying to survive it': Russian cities brace for World Cup
On a riverboat between the World Cup cities of Kazan and Samara last month, a Russian couple in their 50s asked earnestly whether “all these rumours” about Moscow’s poisoning of Sergei Skripal could lead the west to boycott or cancel the tournament.
“Russians don’t surrender to pressure like that, we push back hard,” said Yevgeny Prigov, a hefty businessman who trades in machine parts, echoing a popular Russian cliche.
Their belief, summarised, was that the west wants to see Russia fall on its face when it hosts the World Cup this month, and that Russia would pull it off in spite of its guests.
It’s a bit like inviting your enemies over for dinner: the best revenge is a five-star meal.
“This is supposed to be a prazdnik,” or celebration, said his wife, Maria, sipping a lager. “And that’s what we’re going to give them.”
For the defiant World Cup hosts, this month’s celebration of football comes amid its worst relations with the west since the cold war, after the annexation of Crimea, accusations of interfering in US elections, and the recent nerve agent attack in Salisbury.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Fifa’s president Gianni Infantino with Russian Vladimir Putin. Photograph: Felipe Trueba/EPA
There was a time when Russia saw prestige sporting competitions like the World Cup or the Olympics as an occasion to woo the west and seek acceptance into a club of great nations. Russia still paid lip service to detente when it was awarded the tournament in 2010, and championed a reset with the US under its liberal-ish president Dmitry Medvedev.
But forget about rehabilitating Vladimir Putin through sport now.
“Russia is so toxic that the Mundial [World Cup] can’t help Putin to change anything, including his image,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a political analyst and senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Centre.
Not that anyone here much cares. Defiance to the west has been enshrined in public policy and the national media since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, with officials wearing western sanctions as a badge of respect.
'Much nicer than expected': World Cup fans size up modern Moscow Read more
On national television last week, Putin said that the main reason he had not sacked Vitaly Mutko, the disgraced former sports minister, was because the west wanted him out.
“We know what kind of attack was made against him in connection with the doping scandal,” Putin said. “Under those kinds of circumstances, it is not possible to have him retire.”
The main intrigue of Russia’s World Cup will likely be how Russia’s regional cities cope with the influx of tens of thousands of fans, many of them seeing foreign tourists on this scale for the first time in their history. Security will be extreme.
The rule with prazdniki is that they mustn’t be spoiled, not by protests, provocations, faulty planning or poor security.
“The best [Putin] can do in terms of soft power is to properly organise the championship without unpleasant episodes, especially in the security sphere, and get some pure pleasure from sports,” said Kolesnikov.
Gay rights abuses, war crimes and World Cup fever – it’s an ugly mix | Peter Tatchell Read more
Russian officials still bristle when they recall gleeful foreign coverage of a “double toilet”, two commodes in a single stall, at the Biathlon centre ahead of the 2014 Sochi Olympics. To the west, it was a symbol of slapdash planning or official corruption. To Russia, it was a construction mistake blown out of proportion.
A person close to the Kremlin said that the Russian leader played up the geopolitical nature of the Olympics to justify the criticism over massive expenditures, a reported $50bn, to remake the Black Sea city of Sochi.
“There were a lot of questions about why it was costing so much, so he came out and said it’s about promoting Russian values and developed a narrative behind it,” the person said.
By contrast, the World Cup, costing an estimated $14bn across 11 cities according to the respected RBC business daily, has kicked up less fuss. Among the reasons? The country’s main opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, who publicises reports on official corruption, was sentenced to 30 days in jail last month, and will only be let out after the opening day of the tournament.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mohamed Salah poses with the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov in Grozny. Photograph: Karim Jaafar/AFP/Getty Images
Regionally, it’s a moment for leaders across Russia to preen. Down in Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov has already secured his photo op with Mo Salah, the world’s most famous Muslim footballer, as he leverages the World Cup in his push to be Putin’s envoy to the Middle East. Kadyrov reportedly had the Liverpool star summoned from his hotel, where he was asleep, for the meet-and-greet on the Grozny pitch.
In regions across Russia, local officials have gladly taken the money offered for new stadiums and urban development, while also gritting their teeth for the daunting prospect of ensuring an incident-free tournament.
“Where are you from?” growled the governor of Volgograd, a veteran of the first Chechen war, when I asked him about fan safety ahead of last month’s Russian Cup finals between FC Tosno and FC Avangard Kursk. “I assure you we are taking every possible precaution to ensure their safety.”
It wasn’t an overstatement. The city has closed streets and shut public transport for several kilometres around the stadium during games. The security measures and other preparations are so extensive that match days have been declared public holidays because no one can get to work.
Robbie Williams to perform at World Cup opening ceremony Read more
Residents in one apartment block in Yekaterinburg have been told not to use their balconies, open their windows or stand near their windows on match days, in case they’re mistaken for attackers and shot by police snipers, Reuters reported.
“To be honest we’re just trying to survive it,” Olga Khavanskaya, a schoolteacher, told me in Volgograd during the city’s Victory Day parade. “There’s this feeling like the city has been ripped up from the ground and flipped over. The city looks better than I can ever recall … but I’m ready for it all to be over.”
Even the hooligans are under lock and key. “We’ve pretty much been sidelined,” Kostya, a member of a CSKA firm, told me in a Moscow pub recently.
It’s a tightrope walk, a vast balancing act across 11 cities, and your greatest rivals have front-row seats. Perhaps deep down, the Kremlin may still hope that a successful tournament will earn recognition. But the real concern is not screwing up. So don’t ruin the prazdnik.
