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How to Talk About the World Cup and Sound Reasonably Smart at Soccer

The World Cup started on Thursday. You may not be the world’s biggest soccer fan, but you want to at least pretend, right? Excellent. We’ve got you covered. Here is our six-step plan to sounding smart wherever you might be watching the 2018 World Cup.

Where is this thing, anyway?

This year’s tournament is in Russia. The first game, on Thursday, between the host and Saudi Arabia, was in Moscow. Over the next month, games will be played in 11 cities: as far east as Yekaterinburg (which is closer to Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, than it is to Moscow) and as far north as St.