“Putin is going to use it in the way Hitler used the 1936 Olympics,” the Labour MP Ian Austin said yesterday, as he advocated for England boycotting the World Cup. The UK foreign secretary Boris Johnson agreed: “I think the comparison with 1936 is certainly right.” Naturally these comments were met in Russia with furious derision, a reaction that often greets Johnson’s remarks on the state of the world.

Unfortunately for Ken, he made the same comparison himself on a podcast a couple of months ago and has been left shell shocked by the news that Johnson is now peddling the same line. Can he explain himself?

Eliot Rothwell is an English journalist who has been living in Russia since last year. We talk to Eliot about the World Cup and what Russia hopes to get out of it, the paranoia that now characterises relations between his home country and his adopted one, and the difficulty of knowing what to believe when “nothing is true and everything is possible”.

Then we hear from Emmet Malone who is with the Irish team in Antalya. What are we expecting to see from Martin O’Neill’s side tomorrow evening? Fresh tactics, young guns, a new dawn?

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