Germany’s triumph in Brazil 2014 stands as one of the all time great World Cup wins.
They were obliged to do it the hard way. No European side had ever won the tournament in South America – and Germany closed the campaign beating the two traditional giants from the host continent. But even before seeing off Brazil and Argentina, there were plenty of obstacles in their path.
They played their three group games in afternoon heat in the tropical northeast. Two of them were 1pm kick offs – a time never used for top flight domestic games in Brazil. Then they had a long trip down to Porto Alegre in the South, where winter bites hard, to take on Algeria. It is hardly a surprise that there were reports of an outbreak of a cold virus in the camp, given the changes in temperature the players had to endure. Then it was up to Rio de Janeiro for another 1pm kick off against France, before crushing Brazil in the semi and squeezing past Argentina in the decider.
It was a long, hard road. But one thing may have worked in their advantage. Playing all three group games in tropical heat may not have been ideal. But it did keep them in the same region of the country for the entire first phase – close to their base and with little travelling time.
The opposite experience was that of Italy. They made a strange choice of base camp – a couple of hours up the coast from Rio, not particularly handy for any airport. And it became even stranger when the draw gave them three group games all at the other end of the country. Italy, then, had to undertake a series of epic journeys – and at the end of a tiring club season, details like that can make all the difference. They won their first game, but lost the next two and crashed out of the competition.
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Italy were also victims of the curse of Manaus – the venue in the far north of Brazil. No one did well in the game after making the long ride up to the Amazon. Every team who went to Manaus lost their next game – with the exception of Portugal, who beat Ghana 2-1, although the margin of victory was not wide enough to secure their survival in the competition.
Logistics matter – especially in a modern World Cup where everyone is travelling round the country, and even more so when that country is the size of a continent. Like Brazil in 2014. Or Russia next year.
The 2018 World Cup will not feature a venue as far-flung as Manaus. But there will be plenty of travelling going on – from Saint Petersburg in the north to Sochi in the south, Kaliningrad in the west to Yekaterinburg in the east.
Some, though, will be travelling more than others. This is where the luck of the draw comes in. The only team which, pre-draw, already knows its fixtures is Russia. The hosts will play in Moscow, Saint Petersburg and Samara, and therefore face no epic treks across the motherland during the group phase. But one of their opponents will be clocking up the air miles; the team drawn as A3 start way out East in Yekaterinburg, move a long way northwest to Saint Petersburg and then all the way down south to Volgograd.
There are plenty of other such examples. The World Cup draw is about much more than finding out your team’s opponents next June and July. That is the aspect which will whet the appetite, and get fans talking and working out their permutations for what might happen once the ball starts rolling.
But if who you are playing is obviously important, so too is the question of where you are playing. An informed discussion on World Cup chances has to take into account the venue of the games, and the venue of the team’s base camp – to which they are ordered to return after every fixture. Travel is tiring. These things make a difference. Anyone paying attention to these details knew better than to back Italy to do well in the last World Cup – though anyone backing them to do well in this next World Cup is being even more foolish.
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