Andy Richardson

Qatar eyes fu­ture for com­mu­ni­ty foot­ball, sta­di­ums and the tech­nol­o­gy it has built for the 2022 World Cup af­ter it ends.

Qatar was the first Mid­dle East­ern coun­try to host the in­ter­na­tion­al sport­ing event.

The mo­men­tum is with Eu­rope af­ter a stun­ning come­back in Fri­day’s af­ter­noon ses­sion.

Host­ing a World Cup can leave a myr­i­ad of ef­fects on a na­tion, from lo­cal land­marks to in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions, but what changes will en­dure in Rus­sia and who will be af­fect­ed?

Two teams are prepar­ing to face off in Moscow on Sun­day, first-time qual­i­fiers Croa­t­ia and France who are hop­ing to end a 20-year dry spell.

Qatar might be the first na­tion to host a 48-team World Cup tour­na­ment if a num­ber of CON­MEBOL na­tions have their way.

As World Cup 2018 comes to a cli­max and Rus­sia re­flects on its un­ex­pect­ed­ly deep run into the tour­na­ment, a FIFA ex­hib­it wants fans of all na­tions to re­mem­ber their favourite ex­pe­ri­ences.

Tens of thou­sands from Chi­na prove to be in­te­gral part of glob­al fan­base in Rus­sia.

While ar­riv­ing in Vol­gograd for their team’s open­ing match with Tunisia, they were warm­ly greet­ed by lo­cal res­i­dents de­spite many pre­vi­ous clash­es be­tween Russ­ian and Eng­lish foot­ball fans.