World Cup draw

IT will not just be the groups and path to the final of the 2018 World Cup that will be set in the Kremlin’s State Palace tonight, but also the stage for something deeper, something bigger — the game around the game.

The very location of the draw of course bombastically proclaims this.

We will be witnessing the final pieces being put in place for the most political and politicised World Cup ever, and maybe the most political and politicised sporting event ever.

The boycotted Olympic Games of Moscow 1980 and Los Angeles 1984 have a strong argument as regards the latter, but the very fact they came at the height of the Cold War only deepens the debate over this one, given how the long-term political consequences of that global stand-off only created the context for this tournament.

That Vladimir Putin doesn’t really like football — Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said last week “we hope the president will find some time on his schedule” to attend the draw — doesn’t take away from that, but instead only emphasises the power of the game and its political influence.

It isn’t too long ago that German politician Michael Fuchs argued that the only real punishment for Russia following the fall-out of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crash would be removing them as hosts.

The country’s authorities initially wanted to stage the World

Warm-up: legend Fabio Cannavaro greets a Super Fan as Diego Forlan looks on at yesterday’s World Cup draw rehearsal in Moscow

Cup to serve as a crowning moment in a long-term plan to reposition and reshape its image to the globe.

That image has certainly changed in the time since that controversial awarding of the tournament in December 2010, but largely because of the repositioning and reshaping of global politics that Russia has been so central to.

It has also further altered and

nuanced the context of this World Cup.

Now, what is undeniably the world’s biggest global mega-event will take place in what is arguably the most politically influential country, and definitely one of the most debated countries, at a time when the international political landscape is at its most delicate since the end of the Cold War, and when that very country is accused of playing a key role in that pro-

cess — not least with meddling in foreign elections.

That Russia has only relatively recently began to properly open up to visitors only adds to all of this.

The phrase that is commonly heard in the final stages of the build-up to a World Cup, that all eyes will be on the hosts, will carry multiple meanings this time.

There really hasn’t been a World Cup like this.

Even Argentina 1978, the tournament that was most explicitly and disgracefully used for the nefarious purposes of a political regime, didn’t have the multiple angles of this.

That World Cup 40 years ago was more about the country’s internal strife and the brutal junta, even if it obviously bled outwards — in some cases literally.

Its overtness still didn’t quite have this competition’s more Pot One: Russia, Germany, Brazil, Portugal, Argentina, Belgium, Poland, France

Pot Two: Spain, Peru, Switzerland, England, Colombia, Mexico, Uruguay, Croatia

Pot Three: Denmark, Iceland, Costa Rica, Sweden, Tunisia, Egypt, Senegal, Iran

Pot Four: Serbia, Nigeria, Australia, Japan, Morocco, Panama, South Korea, Saudi Arabia

globally overarching debates.

Russia’s own internal issues of course only intensify the politicisation of this one.

There are the crucial ethical questions about racism and human rights within the country, the economic downslide as well as regional politics that have led to internationally criticised military action.

Away from the stadiums, even the way fans will be handled and the country generally responds will add to the intrigue. Much attention will be paid to the ‘atmosphere’.

It no longer quite feels like there is the same fervour for the great international arrival party that was initially intended in 2010, and that Qatar so greatly desires forthe2022WorldCupthatwas so controversially awarded as part of it and that only further adds to the politicisation of this event.

By next summer, sport and politics — or, at the very least, football and politics — will have never quite mixed like this, on a scale like this.

There is no global event like the World Cup, and there has never been a World Cup like Russia 2018.