World Cup violence fears: Russia ahead

Anyone who follows sport on television understands the commentators’ curse. Just as the man with the microphone suggests that Conor Murray is having a great game, that the Clare defence is rock solid or that French teenager Kylian Mbappe is soccer’s next world superstar they slip and blunder. Praise turns to mockery, endorsement to embarrassment.

Though Russia’s World Cup — or should that be Vladimir Putin’s World Cup? — has another two weeks to run the dire predictions about fan violence and gangs of gym-ready Russian nationalists ready to prey on travelling supporters to celebrate their motherland’s virility have, so far, proved alarmist. And what a relief that is.