George Hamilton

You do have to be resourceful.

And if you don't have your wits about you, you're not going to make it, basically.

My favourite World Cup per se?

Well, for personal reasons, it's Germany in 06.

Because I'd lived in Germany, I'd done Euro 88 in Germany, the World Cup, I'd missed the 74 World Cup in West Germany because I hadn't started commentating in that stage.

But

06 was so significant after the reunification of Germany 15 odd years before.

This was the first opportunity the Germans had to kind of hoist a flag and say, we're proud to be Germans.

And they did that in a big way.

Because it was Germany, it was a very well-run World Cup.

They had Deutsche Bahn on board the railway as one of the sponsors, which meant it was dead easy for the fans to get around.

The whole thing was just a magnificent experience.

And to go to Leipzig, where the big old central stadium from the Soviet era was a listed building, so they built a new stadium inside it.

So the actual main stadium, Red Bull Leipzig Stadium, is a modern stadium inside the walls of big Centralstadion that had been there before.

That memory lives.

Arriving into Hamburg for a game and the dusk,

coming and night falling, and then seeing all the tall buildings, projections of goalposts and footballs.

You know, they just took the whole thing to their hearts.

And it was just a magnificent experience from start to finish.

And to do the final then in Berlin was just magical.