Russia has confounded its critics

What you need to know:

Soccer. In the build-up to the tournament, a political dispute involving the US and British governments with Russia threatened to overshadow the tournament.
But nine days into the tournament, the competition has been smooth sailing.

We have been down this road before; the one where everything said before the World Cup is doom and it portends gloom at the biggest sporting event of all.
For a sustained period, organizers of the 2018 Fifa World Cup in Russia have had to leave with speculation that violence would overshadow the competition and that there would be a major security risk at the tournament to British fans.
The Russia-US political feud also threatened to rear its ugly head into the football and for a moment there appeared to be some unanswered questions prior.
But Fifa and the World Cup are not new to such uncertainty and as the last nine days have shown, kick off of the competition more often than not confounds critics.

Most resistance
More than any other World Cup in history, South Africa 2010 was met with the most resistance, again from the West, but it turned out to be a successful World Cup.
Likewise Brazil 2014’s domestic troubles were magnified by the critics onto the global scale to tarnish the image of the country and Fifa but it turned out to be an historic tournament too.
In Moscow and the other host cities, the games, the fans and the atmosphere in the stadiums and Fan Fests have been a wonderful spectacle to rival with any in history.
The local organizing committee has also put in measures to make the tourists as comfortable as possible with free visas, inner-city transport and reinforced deployment of security across the vast country.

Unpredictable matches
It also helps that the matches have not been an eye sore – there has not yet been a goalless draw – and there has been unpredictability at the tournament with the traditional powerhouses being matches by their far less illustrious opponents.
There are still three more weeks to go which potentially means more twists and turns, but as of now the World Cup is progressing to plan.