Ian Odgers has spent £90,000 and 17 years following England, his away days inked across his body.
He arrived in the United States for the World Cup to find the hosts would rather watch ice hockey.
Odgers, 58, has not missed an England home qualifier or friendly in 17 years.
He has not missed an away game in 12.
He plans his life around the national team and had mapped out a full itinerary for the finals before he set foot on a plane.
Then he got to the States.
“The USA haven’t bought into it,” the production planner from Dereham, Norfolk, told Creatorzine.
“It’s such a big place with so much going on. You were never going to get everyone behind it. The ones I met are more fussed about hockey and basketball.”
He spent much of his first trip down in New Orleans, talking to locals who had no interest in the biggest sporting event on the planet.
The NHL’s Stanley Cup final and the NBA finals had the country’s attention.
The World Cup did not.
“I’m sure it’ll grow as the tournament progresses, especially if the USA gets far,” he said.
“But they are obsessed with hockey and basketball. I’m already sick of them calling it soccer. Not sure I can handle six weeks of it.”
Qatar, he reckons, felt more like a World Cup. “It was a lot more full.”
Felled by a shuttlecock
He nearly didn’t make it at all. In the build-up to the finals, Odgers ruptured his calf playing badminton, which left him racing to be fit enough to fly.
“I thought I had snapped something originally and ended up in casualty for four hours and had four X-rays,” he said.
“I’m lucky I have been able to work from home. But had to cancel a weekend away in my campervan.”
The recovery has not been dignified.
“I couldn’t play badminton now if I tried. I have run 212 marathons, but thankfully those days are behind me.
The medics advise me to elevate, use lots of ice, and rest. I’m gutted. Especially with the weather we’ve had.”
He made it in the end. England played New Zealand on 6 June and Costa Rica on 10 June, both in South Florida, and Odgers was at both.
A £90,000 hobby
It started when he was 12, at his first England game.
He decided then that following the team would be his life’s work, and he has held to it for nearly five decades.
Around 30 countries. Somewhere near £90,000. He calls it the best hobby in the world.
About seven years ago he started turning the trips into tattoos, styled like passport stamps.
“I question myself so many times why I do it, but it’s a passion, a belief, a pride that drives us,” he said.
The Qatar World Cup was the furthest he has gone, a 9,000-mile round trip.
At the Russia finals, one train journey ran seven and a half hours each way.
Somewhere in among all of it he also set up an aid charity for refugees.
A very small world
Following England has thrown up some odd coincidences.
At the England versus Panama game in Russia, the man sitting directly behind him turned out to be someone he went to school with.
Waiting for a bus to England’s first game in Qatar, he got talking to a fan carrying a Norwich flag, mentioned he was from Dereham, and found out the other man was too.
Worth the airfare
The good memories tend to involve Germany. England won 3-2 in Berlin in 2016 and 2-0 at home in 2021, both against the old rivals.
And the 4-3 win over Colombia on penalties at the 2018 World Cup, the sort of night that keeps a man buying plane tickets.
Why It Matters
Odgers is not a content creator in the usual sense.
No channel, no sponsorship, no follower count. What he has is a body that works as a travel log, which is its own kind of content, made the slow way.
The impulse behind it is the one now driving thousands of fan-creators: take a private obsession and turn it into something other people want to watch.
This World Cup will be thick with that instinct. Travel vloggers, fan channels, streamers doing matchday content, all chasing the thing Odgers has chased for free.
His read on the hosts is the gap they will all be working in for six weeks, because the tournament FIFA is selling and the shrug he found in New Orleans are two different stories.
Fan-travel content now sits somewhere between sports reporting and personal vlog, and a home World Cup that half the country is ignoring is exactly the sort of story that travels.
For now Odgers is back in the UK, waiting.
He flies out again for England’s second group game, then the last 16, then the semi-final and final if England get that far.
He thinks they will.
“I feel like I always do,” he said. “It’s definitely coming home.”
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