The largest World Cup ever staged is under way across the United States, Canada and Mexico, and although Syldavia is not in it, the Kingdom has rarely had more reason to tune in. It has five adopted nations to cheer, two reporters of its own out on the road in America, and, in Thailand, a community ready to keep some unsociable hours for it. For that community above all, the Consulate sets down how to follow the tournament from here: when the matches fall in Bangkok time, and where in the city to watch them.

Who Syldavia is Cheering

The Pelikanët, the national side, have not been called up in years and remain, as ever, under administrative review; Syldavia has never reached a finals, and watches every World Cup as a generous neutral. Having no team of its own to support, the Federation has this summer adopted five. Belgium first of all, the homeland of Tintin; France, against whom the Kingdom keeps an old proverb about the cock and the pelican; England and Scotland, for the pelicans London has kept on the lake at St James’s Park since 1664 and the great football ground in Newcastle that shares their name; and Switzerland, a small neutral mountain nation whose friends of Hergé are friends of Syldavia. The full reasoning, feather by feather, is set out in the Federation’s own announcement.

When the Matches Fall, Bangkok Time

There is no gentle way to put it: this is a punishing World Cup for a Bangkok clock. The host cities lie half a world to the west, so the bulk of the football lands in the dead of night. The afternoon kick-offs reach Bangkok between midnight and three in the morning, the hours only the late houses of Sukhumvit are still awake for; the evening games come at a bleary five to eight; and only the prime-time matches, the ones the world arranges itself around, arrive at anything like a civilised hour, nine to eleven, in time for the first coffee of the day. The devoted will set an alarm and find a bar still open; the sensible will choose their nights and save themselves for the late-morning games. Either way, the diary below is in Bangkok time, so that no one sleeps through a kick-off by eleven hours: the five adopted nations and their group games still to come, all times Bangkok:

  • Mon 22 June, 2am: Belgium v Iran
  • Tue 23 June, 4am: France v Iraq
  • Wed 24 June, 3am: England v Ghana
  • Thu 25 June, 2am: Switzerland v Canada
  • Thu 25 June, 5am: Scotland v Brazil
  • Sat 27 June, 2am: Norway v France
  • Sat 27 June, 10am: New Zealand v Belgium
  • Sun 28 June, 4am: Panama v England

Where to Watch It in Bangkok

A city that has never wanted for a screen or a cold glass is well furnished whatever the hour. Among the houses opening their doors, and their kitchens, at improbable times for the occasion:

  • The Sportsman, Sukhumvit Soi 13: the maximalist’s choice, thirty-nine screens and eight projectors between which no kick is easily missed, every fixture carried whatever the hour. 7am to 3am, and later when the football demands it.
  • The Upper Deck, 392/15 Sukhumvit Road by Soi 20: one of the larger rooms in town, doors open early and every match on the wall. 7am to 2am.
  • Fan Zone, this season above the Blue Parrot on Soi Mek Sawat, Chong Nonsi: a viewing-hall that has run at every World Cup since 2018 and knows the drill, giant projectors and a kitchen kept late. Tables must be booked.
  • The Old English, Sukhumvit 53/1 by Thong Lo: the English-pub option, opening early for the lot, with the beer and the plates such a place implies. 8am to 2am.
  • Witch’s Oyster Tavern, Soi Ruamrudee: most of the matches, a late kitchen and colder beer than the name suggests. 1pm to 3am.
  • Paddy Reilly’s, Sathon Soi 12 in Silom: the Irish corner, pints and singing and an early door on match mornings. 8am to 1am.

The Consulate keeps, as ever, its neutrality, and names these not as favourites but as the places the city has chosen to gather. The choice, and the hour, it leaves to each.

And Two of Our Own on the Road

For the first time, the Kingdom is not watching entirely from afar. The Syldavian Press Agency has sent two correspondents across the Atlantic, Milo Zinekaru and Rodica Szkramikzelsca, with a single brief: to follow the adopted five from inside the stadiums and report home. Readers who want the tournament with a Syldavian accent, and a good deal of America besides, can follow them through it.

Their dispatches are as much travelogue as football, by turns sharp, homesick and very funny, and better discovered than summarised here. A few of their photographs from the road have reached the Consulate’s own Instagram; the dispatches themselves are worth the read in full, from the opening round, when the adopted five came through unbeaten, to Scotland’s bruising afternoon against Morocco in a Boston gone briefly, gloriously Scottish.

The Consulate recognises the condition the two travellers describe, for it is its own. To stand in a far country and find it strange and familiar at once, to keep one foot in the valleys while the other learns a new pavement, is the daily lot of every Syldavian settled between Klow and Krung Thep. It wishes them a safe road through the American vastness, the adopted five a fair tournament, and offers, as the Kingdom always does, the oldest and fairest wish of all: may the best team win.