YOUNG AT HEART

clubs siphoning off the cing a competition that contenders every year. ue likewise. Predictabilt. Here we had 32 teams do with homegrown talying your way to World t of the World Cup midtity

and common interacterised the great mete sense of belonging and s been reclaimed by the a way none predicted or This is Russia’s great trive to see how the scene in ough Uefa’s new League ment, should it indeed ng that had ebbed from

rty atmosphere engenurvives is another fascirom a purely anecdotal n vouch for the commod purpose between peote men and women I met e same mundane slog as the politicians that stand e world might be a better place. It remains to be seen if the state apparatus applies the same squeeze on liberty and public expression as it did before the many thousands of Mexicans, Colombians, Argentines and Brazilians brought carnival to the streets of Russia. I wonder, too, if the left-field rendition of the Benny Hill Show signature tune will have much of a life in the Moscow Metro now the football music has stopped. It certainly cheered up this traveller on the way back to the old Alekseevskaya billet from the Luzhniki.

Finally, Vladimir Putin meets Donald Trump in Helsinki today. It is another measure of the success of Russia 2018 that we can’t identify the bigger bogeyman, the Russian Premier or the President of the United States. That tension would have been unthinkable had Barack Obama been the liberal leader attending the pow-wow on behalf of the ‘West’. Sure, Trump is an easy hook on which to hang offence, but he is still the elected president of the biggest democracy on earth.

No wonder Putin was chuckling through the Luzhniki passing out parade. France believe theirs was definitive victory at this World Cup. Putin, stroking his cat all the way to Finland, begs to differ. Young stars have made a mark, none more than France’s 19-yearold Kylian Mbappe, who became the youngest player to score in a World Cup final since Pele in 1958. Aging players have set records, too. Goalkeeper Essam El Hadary became the oldest player ever start in a World Cup game when he lined up in Egypt’s last match against Saudi Arabia aged 45. Mexico veteran Rafael Marquez became the first player picked in a

starting 11 at five World Cups.