The World Cup is objectively the best sporting event. But you already knew that. What you didn't know is how much about the World Cup there is to hate. This preview will ignore the tournament's many virtues and instead focus on a first XI of flaws.
Russia
Hoo boy. Here we go: Fifa's (alleged) malfeasance in awarding this tournament to Russia in 2010 is now an eight-year-old chicken coming home to roost. And that chicken is one ugly f—ing bird. Where to begin? With homophobia? Sergei Skripal? State-sanctioned doping? We better start with racism. After all, at which other tournament will the days before kick off be filled with headlines like 'How will Fifa handle racist incidents?' (Since Fifa's involved, I'm guessing the answer to that question is 'extremely poorly'.) We should also talk a little about the murderous kleptocracy the footballing world will be doing its damnedest to ignore for a month. When journalists are elaborately faking their deaths to prove a point there's probably something rotten going on. And then there's the fight clubs. Yeah, you heard, the fight clubs. Apparently there's a new breed of football hooligan in Russia, groups of fans who head into the woods and brawl with other teams' supporters in organised bouts that have neither rules nor referees. That may sound a figment of someone's imagination but, unlike Brad Pitt's character in Fight Club, those forest fights are very real. Spoiler alert.
VAR
Are you ready to see players mime a TV screen at the referee when they receive a decision they dislike? The video assistant referee may create that unseemly sight, and it may spoil the essence of football by stopping the one sport that actually flows continually, but at least all decisions reviewed will eventually be rendered correct. What's that? The final of the A-League last month was decided by a goal that shouldn't have stood due to a VAR flaw? And Fifa's head of technology says he is "sweating" because he is "unsure if everything works". Oh.
Group stages
The build-up to plenty of recent sporting events has been dominated by negative stories. Think slum-clearing in Brazil, or human-rights abuses in Beijing, or those Greek sprinters' wild and possibly-faked motorcycle crash before Athens. But, generally, once the actual sport starts, all is forgiven and forgotten. Not on this occasion. Not when the first 48 matches are shaping to be this dull. With world rankings being used to determine each team's seeding for the first time, the eight groups appear largely lopsided and literally every game will be the same: one side dominating possession and chances while the other sit deep and attempt to hit on the counter. Where's the Group of Death? Or even the Group of Nagging Pain? Also, how much vodka do you need to drink before believing Russia were randomly drawn into what analytics website FiveThirtyEight calculated was the weakest group in modern World Cup history? With the game's governing body and the host nation both beset by corruption, such fortune does seem a tad suspicious.