A photograph landed last month from David Vujanic of the Holloway Road after Arsenal celebrations spilled into the streets, but Arsenal is not why I'm writing about it.

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The photo is of the tube station and a bus shelter. Someone shirtless atop the shelter, waving a Croatian flag. Two women, one in a hijab, walking past with shopping bags. A buggy parked in the road; a black boy and a white girl sat on top of the bus shelter, their trainers dangling. A bloke in a tracksuit, kids in red shirts, everyone in their own world and nobody bothered about anyone else's. I showed it to my 17-year-old and he said Photo Of The Year.

He's right. It is one of those frames that looks staged because real life rarely composes itself this well. A hotchpotch of backgrounds and beliefs and religion and colour and dress codes, all coming from somewhere, all sharing one strip of pavement for an evening, completely uninterested in dividing the air between them.

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That image is what the World Cup should be. And now the tournament is here, we are finding out whether it still can be.

It began on June 11, first in Mexico City, and for the rest of us, the day after. I've been saying since the back end of last year that this would be a World Cup like no other, and not in the way the marketing departments had in mind. Some of the concerns I had then are being realised in real time.

Geopolitics has colonised every timeline. The shadow of ICE........

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