I've had moments in my countdown when I wrote in a wrong number one day and carried on from there until I noticed my error. Therfore, I occasionally check the countdown clock on one of my favourite websites, the welcome2018 tourist portal (their words). Today they are at 597 days to go. I checked with an online countdown calculator and, as I expected, there are 598 days to go until June 14th 2018. I'm always off by a day because of the time difference. When I write it's the next day in Russia. I cannot figure out why an official website is off by a day. I may have to ask them.
I also went to welcome2018 to see how they announced the big announcement of the official Russia 2018 mascot. There were rumours that because of all the great entries for consideration there may have been more than one. In the end, the wolf Zabivak was the sole winner. Welcome 2018 must have been off for the weekend as there was no mention of Zabivak's victory. There was a story about the mascot selection last week with the headline:
"Kaliningrad zoo incites visitors to select the 2018 World Cup mascot."
Coming from a website that asks visitors to "sing in" I worry about their choice of words meant to attract non-Russian speaking visitors.
Before I get criticised for poking fun at a website run by people for whom English is not their first language, that is not my aim. What I question is why for this huge event that Russia is hosting, that is going to have millions of potential visitors searching for information, and with all the money invested in this and any World Cup, there is not enough money to maintain an English language website written by English speakers.
I really do need to write to them and offer my services, whatever they may be.
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