“I was only in town half an hour before I saw him – a man taking his overweight cat for a walk, down the road and under a bridge on a makeshift lead. Nobody could really tell me what Saransk, the capital of Mordovia and about 430 miles east of Moscow, would be like, but this was an interesting start. Welcome to the city nobody expected to host the World Cup. … The next day, after Denmark beat Peru 1-0, the roads were reopened. Metal-box buses clanked and chugged along as a souped-up hatchback with one lime-green tyre rim raced past, blaring techno music as it went. Maybe the closures did make sense.” BBC
