As the 2018 FIFA World Cup quarterfinals played out, of the teams that progressed — England, France, Belgium, Croatia — we were packing for a trip through the first three. We hadn’t predicted they’d make the semifinals. We certainly hadn’t predicted France would win it all.
The timing was not entirely coincidental. Aaron and I had wanted to take our teenage boys to Europe for years. They had grown up playing football — soccer to Americans — following the European leagues, watching the players they trained alongside emulate. A nearly month-long trip through four countries organized around a professional club camp felt like the right frame: football as the theme, culture and architecture as the substance, rail as the connective tissue.
The Ajax day camp was the anchor. Ajax [EYE-ax] — the Amsterdam professional club known for its youth development — offered a week-long day camp that left the boys training with European peers each morning and us free to explore. We secured the week of July 16–20, which set the rest of the itinerary in motion: London first and last, The Netherlands in the middle, Belgium and France connecting the arc.
Twenty-five days, carry-on only — each of us with a small roller and a backpack, a discipline born from a lesson learned the hard way in Istanbul and applied every trip since. Rail throughout: the Eurostar between London and the continent, Eurail passes for Benelux and France, regional trains and trams within each city.
2018 Itinerary
| Dates | Location |
|---|---|
| July 8–9 | Overnight flight from San Francisco to London (SFO to LHR) |
| July 9–13 | London (Arsenal Emirates Stadium) |
| July 13–15 | Amsterdam |
| July 15–21 | The Hague for the Ajax camp and day trips in the Netherlands (3 rail days) |
| July 21–24 | Brussels (through Antwerp) with day trips in Belgium (3 rail days) |
| July 24–28 | Paris (through Lille, 2 rail days) |
| July 28–31 | Lyon with a day trip, back in Paris for a day, return to London (2 rail days) |
| July 31–Aug 2 | London with day trip to Manchester (Man City Etihad Stadium) |
| August 2 | Morning in London before return flight from LHR (with transfer in Montreal, Canada) to SFO |
The World Cup Thread
The World Cup semifinals ran through our trip like a second itinerary. We watched England lose to Croatia at the historic Prince Edward, a Bayswater pub, in a standing-room-only crowd that was exuberant until the final whistle and emptied almost immediately after with the quiet deflation of a country that had briefly believed. Then France beat Belgium at the Victoria in Paddington, where we had the most extraordinary scotch eggs with a pint of Guinness and watched the French contingent in the room quietly contain their satisfaction.
For the third-place playoff — England against Belgium — we were in Amsterdam, up in the mezzanine of the Foodhallen, working through small plates from around the world among a crowd that was noticeably less engaged. The Netherlands had been out since the group stage. England lost.
When France beat Croatia in the final, we watched from the upstairs lobby of our hotel in The Hague — an airy, modern living room-like space overlooking Grote Marktstraat, surrounded by a few international guests with no real stake in the result. Caden was wearing the blue-and-white striped France jersey he’d bought at Nike London for his birthday — perhaps an instinct, perhaps a foreshadowing. Our family had been cheering for France throughout, knowing we’d be there not long after. When France won, it felt personal in the way that timing makes things personal.
By the time we reached Paris, France had already been celebrating for days. Caden wore his jersey along the Champs-Élysées, still draped in tricolor as the city continued celebrating both the World Cup and Bastille Day simultaneously. We stopped at the Adidas store and the PSG store along the way. Paris in patriotic mode is a specific experience.
The Football Grounds
Cole had been a passionate Manchester City supporter his entire footballing life — drawn specifically to Pep Guardiola’s fluid, technical style of play, the kind of possession-based game that rewards the qualities Cole had spent years developing: precision, technical footwork, the ability to read the field and go both ways from the center. He had had a ball attached to his foot since he could walk.
Caden, contrarily, had been a lifelong Liverpool fan — well before their recent success made that a fashionable position — and played with the kind of grit and heart a team wants on their side and hates to play against. Both boys had always had a mature intellect and high game acumen; both had late growth spurts that kept them on the smaller side through their youth years, often physically outmatched but rarely outthought.
We had watched Liverpool beat AC Milan at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara a couple of years before, so when it came to the stadium visits, Caden readily agreed that the Manchester day should go to the Etihad — Cole had gotten his Liverpool moment; now it was Cole’s turn — with Old Trafford as a bonus detour. The Emirates visit was simply for the family, fans of the beautiful game, though both boys wore the jerseys of their favorite club players for the occasion.
The Emirates Stadium tour began at Arsenal tube station, the boys both in their Arsenal jerseys, walking down Drayton Park through Highbury — crossing a bridge to where the stadium rose above the rooftops at the center of it all. On the tube, an older woman boarded and, before Cole could offer his seat, ordered him to stand. She went on about teaching young people manners. He stood. We decided she was probably a Tottenham supporter.
The Etihad was another matter entirely. Completely decked out in his City kit, Cole arrived at the Etihad Campus with a particular focus on his face. He was a high-level player at the time, aspiring to the professional game, and he moved through the exterior with the attention of someone cataloguing details for future reference. The ultramodern Tunnel Club, the home locker room, the workout facilities — he absorbed all of it. We sat in the coaches’ seats along the pristine pitch. The boys sat post-game style in the press room box. We stood in the small, soundproofed interview room and understood for the first time, from inside it, how compact it actually is. As we left, Cole muttered, almost to himself: “I’ll be back.”
He has since hung up his boots. But I know that afternoon at the Etihad will always live in his heart. It lives in mine.
Although we had hoped to reach Anfield for the Liverpool tour as well, Manchester to Liverpool and back left insufficient time for both grounds before the last train. Old Trafford instead — no tour, just a walk around the exterior, Cole’s City kit covered for the occasion.
Old Trafford sits closer to the old industrial quarter than the gleaming Etihad campus, its history more visibly worn. A club with its own pride and its own story. We noted the contrast, made our way back through the city center for a brief walk, then caught the Virgin Train back to London’s King’s Cross.
The next morning we had a full English breakfast at Plum and Spilt Milk — the restaurant tucked between King’s Cross and St. Pancras, the two stations that had bookended the continental leg of the trip from start to finish. Then back to Paddington to catch the Heathrow Express, homebound.
Out of the four World Cup semifinalists, we visited three. Croatia remains on the list.
Follow the journey: London → • The Netherlands → • Belgium → • France →
