Red Square at midnight: Where, when and how Russian fans bade final farewell to the World Cup
CHRISTIAN RADNEDGE; A MOSCOW MEMOIR —- Now, with the World Cup two weeks into history, the story can be told of the midnight match on final night in Red Square when sport and politics collided in unique and exuberant fashion.
The scene of Peter the Great’s public executions, where Napoleon marched expecting a nation to bend to his will, and where Joseph Stalin regularly paraded the might of the Soviet Union became Russia’s biggest playground as local and foreign fans kicked a solitary football across the historic cobbles.
Russia had exited the competition at the quarter-finals stage, surprising progress in itself, but national fervour for the beautiful game was still on display on the night after France beat Croatia to win the world crown.
Nighttime outside the walls of the Kremlin
Luzhniki Stadium was the setting for a glorious French triumph, 24 hours after Bastille Day, but the party atmosphere was carried on by Russians who proudly chanted “Rossiya” and created small games of football in the centre of the city.
In Red Square, one small game of rondo turned into head tennis which turned into keep-ball which surged between Lenin’s tomb to St Basil’s Cathedral.
Name game
The ball was carried on by someone new every few seconds to the proud possessionary shout of “Neymar!” Or “Dzagoev!” Or “Harry Kane!”
The Square-wide game, more redolent of the medieval football when English villages challenged each other to kick a ball across counties, grew ever more exuberant and therefore more risky.
Naturally, it was only a matter of time before one hefty kick took the ball over the security fence and onto the steps of the hallowed Kremlin. A formal security guard was given a night ovation when he returned the ball to a crowd now numbering in hundreds.
However, when someone kicked it back too close to the resting places of the great and the good and maybe the not-so-good the atmosphere turned sour. One couple who tried to storm the barricades were led away by armed guards. And another. A lone, taunting chant of “Ukraine” might have provoked more trouble but was not repeated.
Another ball was found, and the game continued but in smaller bursts as the World Cup stardust drifted away into Moscow’s early morning.
Jules Rimet had left the building.
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