I was happy to realize today that I (again) missed counting down a couple of days ago and we are down to 10 days to go, not 11 as I thought about five minutes before I started writing this. And if you are in a European time zone there are 9 days to go as you read this.
Day two of Russia 2018 sees Uruguay play Egypt. For the sake of seeing the best players in the world playing in football's biggest showpiece we all hope that Mohammed Salah is fit in time. But the potential Salah-Luis Suarez duel is not the only fascinating aspect of this match.
It is being played in Ekaterinburg, the most eastern host city, over 1,000 miles from Moscow, in a stadium with a very interesting story. Fifa rules stipulate that stadiums have a minimum 35,000 capacity. With time running out to redevelop the existing stadium the decision was made, by some very creative architects and engineers I'm sure, to build temporary stands behind each goal, outside the stadium.
Yes, outside. It's as though somebody ripped out the ends of the stadium and erected seats on giant scaffolding so that the whole town could come out to watch the show. The rogue builders would, however, have needed to put more scaffolding together as Ekaterinburg is Russia's fourth largest city with a population of 1.35 million.
The bigger of the two stands is 45m high. That's a long way up and fans might get a better view of the Leaning Tower of Nevyansk, about an hour away from Ekaterinburg than the smile on Salah's face when he scores Egypt's first World Cup goal since 1990.
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