First Thoughts: Planning for World Cup 2018 Russia

First Thoughts: Planning for World Cup 2018 Russia

It’s time to get my thinking cap on and start the planning process for Russia 2018.

If I am honest with you, given the current political climate I was hoping that FIFA may have changed their mind about holding such a prestigious event in Russia, and that the Sepp Blatter/FIFA revelations of last year would have called into question the way the location was chosen. As I see it, they have gone too far down the preparations road to be able to change it now, so it looks like Russia is it. 

An added complication to the planning process is the fact that my partner Fiona still is hesitant about spending any time in Russia, primarily she thinks all Russian are evil and that the country is a fundamentally dangerous place to be. I don’t necessarily agree with her, but I am trying to respect her wishes. 

Personally I don't have that much of an issue with Russia as it adds yet another country to the long list of places that I would never had chosen to travel to. I doubt that the media's portrayal of Putin is particularly representative of the whole Russian population, and I am sure that the majority of the Russian people are just as friendly as those of any other country we have traveled to. I am absolutely certain that there are places of stunning beauty and abject poverty in Russia, much the same as anywhere we have been in our world cup adventures, (South Africa & Brazil are great examples)

In recent weeks, Fiona has become more flexible about stepping foot on Russian soil, but even I am not in favour of spending the full 6 weeks of the competition in a Russian city  We haven’t stayed in a single city location at a world cup since 2002 in Korea, so I have started considering a split location approach as we have done for the past 3 world cups.

Beyond Moscow, there are other cities with games that may be more attractive to visit, such as St. Petersburg, (7 games) & Sochi, (6 Games). St Petersburg is one of the greatest cities in the world, a UNESCO World Heritage site and conveniently located only 200kms from the Finnish boarder. Sochi is a resort city on the Black Sea, the location of the 2014 Winter Olympics, and a 1 hour flight/6 hour ferry trip away from Northern Turkey or even Greece. To cast a wider net, Estonia & Latvia are all border countries that I might consider, (not too dodgy) and even Belarus, (dodgier), at a push, but Poland and Ukraine, (both well dodgy) don’t score very highly on my list. 

So when everything is considered, my current favoured plan would be to have a combination of staying inside and outside Russia, and/or travelling to the games we get tickets for. This could mean spending a couple of weeks either in St. Petersburg, (or close by in Finland), a couple of weeks in Sochi, (or close by in Turkey/Greece), with the option to fly in and out of Moscow, (or any other city) for specific games. If we take this approach, it will increase the internal travel costs, and we will be playing "match ticket roulette" again, but we have had good success at that particular problem in the past.

Plenty to think about.....