RUSSIA 2018 🏆🏆⚽⚽🥇🏅🎈🎉🔥

FIFA World Cup is a fiercely contested honour. When Russia was awarded the tournament of 2018, it defeated a rival bid from England—as well as joint proposals from Belgium and Holland, and Spain and Portugal.

Yet hosting the world’s most popular sporting event also entails real risks for the Russian government. In previous tournaments, football has become a backdrop for political and social protests. In Brazil in 2014, President Dilma Rousseff was routinely booed when she appeared at matches—a sign of the unpopularity that was to lead to her impeachment and removal from office in 2016. Football provided little solace for the Brazilian president. Her country’s celebrated team, widely expected to win the cup, suffered a humiliating 7-1 defeat by Germany in the semi-finals. The “feel-good” mood that the Brazilian government had fondly hoped would be generated by the tournament swiftly gave way to something much more sour.

Russia is a far more tightly controlled and less democratic country than Brazil, so there will be fewer opportunities to use the tournament as a forum for public protest. Still, the World Cup will take place at a sensitive time. The first match, in Moscow on June 14th, will be less than three months after Russia’s presidential election.