White knuckle taxi ride worth it
never mind international careers.
“But we feel that they’re able to play the way we want to play, playing with huge pride, playing with no lack of quality, showing the sort of mentality to work for the group,” he said.
And it’s a group that, Southgate emphasises, reflects the diversity of England and cuts through the economic divide in England where so much wealth is centred in the south.
Southgate has singled out the less affluent northern towns where players such as Maguire are from.
“All of these players come from different parts of the country,” Southgate said, “and there will be youngsters watching at home from the areas they come from. They’ll be inspiring.” The World Cup can be a once-in-alifetime experience for football fans.
football writer Michael Burgess is one of those lucky fans who travelled to Russia to experience the tournament first hand.
Speaking to Newstalk ZB’s Martin Devlin about his experience travelling to watch this morning’s quarter-final between England and Sweden, Burgess detailed his journey to Samara in a crazy 400km taxi ride.
“It was a hell of a journey,” Burgess said.
“It was quite tricky to get here.
I was in Kazan, which is about 400km to the west, for the Brazil-Belgium game.
“But then there were no buses and trains available to go to Samara, so what we ended up doing was arranging a carpooling service to meet us at four o’clock in the morning at a shopping mall in the outskirts of town. [But] the carpooling service didn’t turn up, so then we ended up just getting a taxi.
“The driver was quite shocked. We told him, ‘look, can you drive us 400km?’
“He was a bit of a lunatic, he was doing about 150km/h at times. But we got here and we’re all in one piece.”
Despite the long journey, Burgess said the taxi ended up costing only 7000 roubles (about $160-$170).
“[The driver] was probably at the end of his shift. It was 4.30 in the morning. He’s probably thinking ‘I’ll do one more job and go home’ and suddenly he’s driving these three foreigners who can’t speak any Russian 400km down this very dodgy highway at times, full of potholes, full of everything.
“So it was certainly an adventure. “It lived up to all the cliches, he was smoking the whole time, flicking ash back into us in the back seat, he had the music blaring. It was just a complete experience.”