World Cup Diary - Day 14: Three cities in 24 hours as VAR continues to ruin lives

The greatest thing, for me, about a World Cup, is learning about the culture of a country you would not necessarily, in normal circumstances, spend long enough in to garner such knowledge.

Before the last World Cup, I had been to Brazil before, but only to visit Rio de Janeiro, which while being a sensational city, isn’t really the real Brazil.

Those who have been to Moscow before, and then visited other Russian cities afterwards, will know the same feeling. This, in a way, will be the last tournament for a long time that such an experience can be had, with Qatar and then a shared USA/Mexico/Canada the next World Cups, and the next Euros being spread across the whole continent.

What will be lost is that look of amazement on people’s face in places like Saransk. After a overnight train, during which I literally slept from start to finish, in surprising comfort, I arrived in another new city, for Portugal v Iran – winner takes all.

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As I have mentioned earlier, everyone has been super friendly, but in Saransk, there is real intrigue in the differentiations between visiting fans.

The last famous visitor to the Mordovia region was Nadezhda Tolokonnikova of the famous political activists Pussy Riot, and her visit was at Vladimir Putin’s pleasure, behind bars.

The Iranians were drawing the greatest attention, predominantly for one, rather irritating reason – vuvuzelas. I was convinced that those most annoying horns had died a death after the 2010 World Cup, but determined to make noise by any means possible, the travelling Iranians had decided to bring them back. Great.

One fan I met had a bag of them, dishing out to other fans. Yet, while they are may seem an unnecessary relic of a poor previous tournament, there is a nice story behind why Iranians have embraced them once again – they just want to make as much noise as possible, for as short a time, and my word were they enjoying themselves.

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In front of the beautiful cathedral in the centre of town, the city was awash with colour, and the locals could not get enough of it. People had come from all around Mordovia to take photographs of the visitors, and ask as many questions as possible. A truly heartwarming scene.

The match itself inspired a much less positive feeling from the press box – we were all in VAR oblivion.

It was my first live experience of VAR in Russia, and I am still none the wiser. So the referee goes to look at a Cristiano Ronaldo elbow, takes ages to do so, obviously sees it, and brandishes only a yellow card? Right.

The Iran penalty late in the game caused even more fury, as rewrites were needed all round, with narratives completely turned upside down.

Some angry quotes were to be taken in the press conference and the mixed zone, which meant for another late night for me.

Nonetheless, I didn’t mind, as I had time to kill, before another night train – for the second night in a row. This time I experienced ‘third class, open sleeping’, and again, while I have had more uncomfortable sleeps, there was not much room, literally, to manoeuvre.

Then it was a flying visit to Moscow, before heading straight to the airport for a flight to Kaliningrad – the Russian enclave attached to Poland and Lithuania. The geography does not make any sense – look it up.

England-Belgium is not far off, and it in area rich in amber, who will in fact strike gold – securing a second place finish and a more favourable draw?