2018 Russia Football World Cup. Pixabay
Everything you need to know before the World Cup begins
From June 14 to July 15, you have an appointment with the Football World Cup, a competition that this year will be held in Russia for the first time in its entire history and that will bring together millions of people
The 2018 Football World Cup schedule
The Football World Cup is the largest televised event, so it is normal that the first thing people worry about in their respective countries is knowing where they will be able to enjoy their national team's matches this year.
In Spain all matches of this 21st edition are free-to-air, so you can watch your team wherever you like most... at home, in pubs, or in some areas of your city where screens will be set up to broadcast live.
How to get organized?
Before the tournament starts, it would be wise to look at the planned schedule of matches for the different phases of the competition (group stage, round of sixteen, quarterfinals, semifinals, and the final, of course), so you know how to combine the different matches with your other obligations.
In this infographic you can see the dates, times, and channels where you can enjoy each of them.
The opening match of the World Cup will be played by the Russian team and Saudi Arabia, two countries that are not favorites but will have the responsibility of kicking off this competition held every four years.
In this World Cup, Spain plays in Group B, along with Iran, Portugal, and Morocco. The Spanish team will play its first match on Friday, June 15 at 8 p.m. against Portugal.
2018 Russia Football World Cup. Pixabay
Spain’s second match will be on Wednesday, June 20 against Iran at the same time (8 p.m.); followed by the last group stage match against Morocco on Monday, June 25, at the same time as the previous ones.
Afterwards, we hope to have more dates to confirm.
Russia and the Football World Cup
This will be the first FIFA Football World Cup held in Russia, and the organizers expect up to one million tourists to arrive in the country.
To organize and accommodate the flood of athletes, journalists, and fans who will fill the streets of the cities where the matches will be played, Russia has been preparing for the last eight years.
In fact, they have had to invest and build many infrastructures to increase both hotel capacity and communications and connections between cities in a country as vast as Russia, which has more than 17 million square kilometers (the largest in the world).
In the 2018 World Cup, 32 national teams will participate, and it will be the first to include countries such as Iceland and Panama. The tournament will be played in twelve stadiums across eleven Russian cities, with Moscow being the only city to have two different stadiums.
For organizational tasks, FIFA will count on an "army" of 15,000 workers, supported by about 20,000 volunteers.
Curious facts about the World Cups
As in all competitions, there are winners and losers, so this year the national teams of United States, Chile, Netherlands, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, and Italy, the most “tragic” loss, have missed out on the football World Cup.
In fact, Italy will be the only one of the eight countries that hold one or more World Cup trophies that will not be in Russia this year.
The World Cup logo was unveiled in a very special way: from space. The astronauts of the Russian space station were responsible for showing, through a video, the image that would illustrate this new edition.
Except for the 2010 South Africa World Cup, all countries that have hosted the tournament have passed the first round. All World Cup trophies have been won by Europe (which holds 11 trophies) or South America (which has nine): of these 20 tournaments, Brazil has won 5, becoming the team with the most trophies and the greatest winner in history.
Only four times has a team won all their matches in a World Cup: Uruguay won four out of four in 1930; Italy did the same in 1938; and Brazil achieved it twice (6 out of 6 in 1970 and 7 out of 7 in 2002).
The last World Cup was held in Brazil in 2014, where Germany won the world cup. This year the German team will try again to add two consecutive victories, but first they will have to face others as prepared as they are or more, like Colombia (which was the promise of the 2014 football World Cup), and all the eternal favorites, such as Argentina, Brazil, or France…
Finally, we leave you here the song chosen as the official anthem for this World Cup, by Polina Gagarina, Egor Creed, and Dj SMASH, so you can add a soundtrack to the highest international football competition.
