Rafa Honigstein

with sort of the narratives around teams unless you're already familiar with them because you you know I mean tonight you're thinking okay I really want to know a bit more about this Mexico team but oh no there's another game coming up and I need to think about these other four or six or seven or 18 teams and it's hard it's hard to dive into it the way that you usually can I think when there's just slightly less frenzied amount of teams involved yeah I felt like it was quite

And I think that's something that perhaps we all underestimated a little bit, just how local this World Cup is.

I don't think a lot of people in Europe felt very excited because, you know, it's hard to get to, it's very expensive, there's all the immigration issues, the political situation is...

It's very divisive.

But people are here.

Like even at that Jordan-Austria game, there were thousands and thousands of Jordan Americans who traveled from all over the U.S.

to be there with their team.

And it felt very, very special.

So the world already is here to a certain extent, even if...

you know, the fans from their home country stay away, maybe.

You can keep up with the results and try to see as much as you can, but really to do it justice, you have to concentrate even on certain teams.

Or what my colleagues are doing this time is that they're just staying in certain cities.

So for them, it's like almost, you know, today I'm the South Korea expert, but tomorrow I have to be the Belgian expert.

And it's a very different way of working to the way I've covered tournaments in the past where you really follow your team around because it's quite easy to do, whether that's in Qatar or even in Russia, it was fairly easy to do because you kind of know where your teams are.

Now it's very, very hard.

to really stick with one team because the amount of travel and cost involved doesn't really allow it.

So you have to focus more geographically.

And then again, it adds another layer of complication, I think, to the way you cover the game and maybe makes it slightly less in-depth and more superficial.

At least at this stage of the tournament.

Yeah, for sure.