Part of the charm of following a World Cup is staying up, or getting up, at ungodly hours to watch a match you would never normally consider. Readers of a certain age may remember the Republic of Ireland against Cameroon at 6:30am in 2002, or England playing Italy at 11pm in 2014 and Japan versus Ivory Coast at 2am.
Those have generally been quirks in the schedule rather than the norm, and surely the best thing about World Cups is watching three or four games back to back from early afternoon until late at night, which has rarely been the case this summer.
This World Cup, of course, has been particularly challenging for European audiences, not just for kick-off times but the inconsistent scheduling. Some nights you get a game at 5pm or 6pm, some nights you wait until 9pm or 10pm. Saturday’s slate of fixtures was great, but all took place between 10pm and 6am.
And if you thought it had been tricky enough to get into a routine during the group stage, good luck this week. The last 32 got underway on Sunday and across the 16 matches in this round, there are 13 different kick-off times. Thirteen!
They are: 5pm, 6pm, 7pm, 8pm, 9pm, 9.30pm, 10pm, 11pm, 12am, 1am, 2am, 2.30am and 4am.
The point about overnight matches is not really a complaint — the rest of the world has had enough of Europeans complaining about things like this — just a statement of fact. It has made watching this World Cup far trickier than normal. But not impossible.
It can be done, and surely anyone with a subscription to The Athletic wants the best World Cup experience. Aside from actually being in the host countries, the best way of getting the usual World Cup experience has to be to go to bed after the match that finishes closest to midnight, wake up the next morning, avoid your phone and immediately start watching the games back on the BBC’s iPlayer or ITVx. (ITVx provides a spoiler-free experience and iPlayer tries to do something similar, but there have still been three or four occasions when thumbnails and timeline markers have ruined matches.)
Admittedly, this is all considerably easier when your job is to watch football, but anybody who works from home can easily have a game on the TV in the background, which is not a million miles away from the usual routine of watching Homes Under the Hammer and Bargain Hunt. If you are in the office, chances are you would miss a lot of games if they were on at European-friendly times anyway. That is an age-old problem.
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The World Cup morning kicks off well before office hours anyway. Watching football while getting ready for work or school is a great way to squeeze everything in. Having kids to get ready arguably makes things easier, especially if your children want the full experience too.
In our house, my six-year-old’s interest in football has absolutely exploded over the past four weeks, to the extent that on the first Friday of the tournament, he came out of school and asked, “Can we watch South Korea versus Czech Republic?” I thought group-stage fatigue might have kicked in by now but when I was out on Sunday afternoon, he reminded my wife that they had not seen the end of Colombia versus Portugal, so they put that on.
I have never been so happy to be woken up at 6am and asked if we can go downstairs. Yes, we can. On the first Sunday of the tournament, we watched Scotland versus Haiti, Brazil versus Morocco and half of Australia versus Turkey before 11:30am. After going out for some fresh air, we finished the Australia game.
I cannot pretend that he sits and watches every minute — he will usually go and draw sometimes and look up when the commentator raises his voice — but is that not true of the rest of us? Apart from the drawing. I am hardly sitting down and providing detailed tactical analyses of these matches because I have to make toast or clean porridge off my baby, but I would not change it for the world.
One morning, I was asked to write about Lionel Messi against Algeria in proper detail, and because my son wanted to watch Norway versus Iraq, I put Argentina on my laptop while he watched Norway on the TV. We have never missed a school bell or a deadline.
If watching the full matches is just not possible, watching the highlights without knowing the score is a decent compromise. It is significantly better than waking up, checking the scores on an app and continuing your day.
If you have not tried it this way yet, then the knockout stage is a great place to start. There are some mouthwatering games — Netherlands versus Morocco, Mexico versus Ecuador, Portugal versus Croatia — tucked away in the middle of the night, while Australia versus Egypt gets the Friday 7pm billing, but this is the hand we are dealt.
Although Canada and South Africa kicked things off in the last 32 with one of the worst games in football history — we only rewatched the last eight minutes on Monday morning, and that was too much — there should be some great ties to watch, or catch up on, before the last 16 starts on Saturday evening (it could be Germany versus France, already!).
It is going to be a whirlwind of football over the coming days, with 15 games between Monday and late Friday night/Saturday morning. Even those of us who could feasibly catch up on all of the matches the next day may struggle, especially when there are two games overnight, but that is part of the fun.
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As long as you turn off notifications and mute group chats, you are free to put Portugal versus Croatia on while you make your breakfast, or at the very least the highlights. If you have the chance after that, why not put on Switzerland-Algeria before lunch?
This is what the World Cup is all about, after all — you just have to work a bit harder this time.
When are the World Cup last-32 matches?
Monday
- Brazil vs Japan, Houston (6pm UK, 1pm ET)
- Germany vs Paraguay, Boston (9.30pm UK, 4.30pm ET)
- Netherlands vs Morocco, Monterrey (2am UK Tuesday, 9pm ET Monday)
Tuesday
- Ivory Coast vs Norway, Dallas (6pm UK, 1pm ET)
- France vs Sweden, New Jersey (10pm UK, 5pm ET)
- Mexico vs Ecuador, Mexico City (2am UK Wednesday, 9pm ET Tuesday)
Wednesday
- England vs DR Congo, Atlanta (5pm UK, 12pm ET)
- Belgium v Senegal, Seattle (9pm UK, 4pm ET)
- USA vs Bosnia and Herzegovina, San Francisco Bay Area (1am UK Thursday, 8pm ET Wednesday)
Thursday
- Spain vs Austria, Los Angeles (8pm UK, 3pm ET)
- Portugal vs Croatia, Toronto (12am UK Friday, 7pm ET Thursday)
- Switzerland vs Algeria, Vancouver (4am UK Friday, 11pm ET Thursday)
Friday
- Australia vs Egypt, Dallas (7pm UK, 2pm ET)
- Argentina vs Cape Verde, Miami (11pm UK, 6pm ET)
- Colombia vs Ghana, Kansas City (2.30am UK Saturday, 9.30pm ET)
