God, the noise.
I heard it coming before it got to me.
The top tier goes first. It always goes first. They are up over the goal and they see the whole of the net before anybody down at grass level can.
So I was stood on that white line on my own, in the last quiet place left in Moscow, and I watched 18,000 people at the far end of a stadium come up out of their seats with no sound on them at all.
A wave going up a beach with the volume off.
Then the tier under them. Then the one under that.
It came down the bowl and across the grass towards me, row by row, and I could see it moving, and I could not hear one thing.
Half a second.
That is how long I had.
Then it hit.
KRAK.
That is the first of it. Not a roar. A crack, like ice going on a pond, like a tree coming down, 40,000 mouths opening inside the same quarter of a second.
And then the wall arrives behind it.
RRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.
