It’s 4am on Friday 29 June, and having just spent a couple of days in Gdansk and a day trip to Kaliningrad for the Belgium match, I sat in my hotel room booking a flight to Moscow for the knockout stages.
Yes, it would have been great to finish top, but given the potential opponents and the logistics of travelling to Moscow rather than Rostov, it didn’t really bother me.
Later that day, I travelled home from Gdansk via a half-day stopover in Hamburg. This was now the third country I had been to during that week.
I had been in the different cities of Krakow, Gdansk, Kaliningrad and Hamburg in the space of a few days as this World Cup journey continued.
I was back at home for the weekend, before I flew out to Moscow on Monday for the round of 16 match.
Me and my friend both landed in Moscow around 10pm, checked in to our hotel and headed straight out for our pre-match day ‘warm up’.
On Tuesday, I woke up feeling slightly nervous but also excited ahead of the game against Colombia.
We started the day by visiting Red Square. Since the start of the World Cup, I hadn’t been to Moscow, so this was something I definitely wanted to see. We spent the afternoon in bars and restaurants around this area before heading to the Spartak Stadium a few hours before the game.
The game itself had a mix of emotions. We had taken the lead, only for Colombia to equalise late on.
I’ll be honest, as extra time and then penalties loomed, I wasn’t very confident.
Fast forward to the last penalty and we have done it! We actually won on a penalty shootout. The celebrations that followed were amazing. We stayed in the ground for probably an hour afterwards celebrating.
The next day, me and my friend John booked ourselves onto the FIFA free train to Samara. The 15- hour journey was certainly interesting.
Whilst John decided to spend most of the journey sleeping, I went down to the restaurant carriage on the train where I met other fans, both England and other nations and we had a generally good time chatting to the others.
This long train journey wasn’t so bad after all, but I did however spend the last few hours getting some rest before we reached Samara.
So far, the first day in Samara has been a relaxing one at the beach, as we look ahead to Saturday’s big game.
We can do it…and I cannot wait till Saturday.
