On Day Zero, first symptoms of Seoul fever

We reach the COEX Hall, where the international media centre is located. Then calamity: Someone else has gone off with my bag. The driver (who’s responsible for such things) apologises profusely, holds an interminable conversation with his bosses on one of his three mobile phones and then orders everyone off the bus.

He’s located my bag, he manages to tell me, and drives me off, solo, to where he thinks it is. It is there and, with a few more bows and apologies he drops me back at the COEX.

Registration takes five minutes but entry into the main hall is tougher. Security is massive; there were armed commandos at the airport (who, with their headsets et al bore more than a passing resemblance to Keanu Reeves in Speed). Here, there’s a posse of policemen outside the hall and another lot inside. They open both my bags, then see my humble camera. It’s non-digital, I tell them, so they ask me to take a picture of the floor as proof. This will happen everytime I enter the hall, they warn, so — given that I’m not the most trigger-happy photographer anyway — my roll will probably comprise pictures of grey stone.

The buzz here is all about Zidane. Will he play, won’t he play, are France then doomed? The Senegalese journalists take the opportunity to rib their former masters. ‘‘We’ll probably meet Argentina in the final’’, says one. The joke isn’t taken in very good spirit. The TV screens, though, are relaying live broadcast of the (hopefully) final round of the Blatter-Ruffinen slugfest. It’s not clear who’s winning but the fallout, sadly, is likely to harm the football world for some time to come.

If there’s one complaint against the organisers, it’s the language barrier. There are enough volunteers, enough booths to help you with whatever you want but few, too few, people who speak or understand English. What compounds the problem is that written and spoken Korean are quite different so eventually, in this country of the latest in communications technology, it’s down to basic hand signals! There is, though, a clear desire to help; while struggling on the subway with two heavy bags and a map, there were enough people who came up and offered directions.

So, too, when I eventually reached the vicinity of my hotel. Korean addresses (and Japanese ones, too, I’ve been warned) are notorious for revealing next to nothing about the location. And since all signs are in Korean anyway, one proceeds with trepidation and gets by on the kindness of strangers. It helps, of course, when they see the FIFA media badge round my neck. Because the fever is everywhere … On the drive from the airport, there are flags of all the countries. Buses, metro stations, the sidewalks all proudly proclaim the country’s biggest spectacle to date.

Strangely, Zidane is way behind in the billboard stakes. I’ve seen lots of Figo and the Boys from Brazil but Zizou’s likeness is conspicuous by its absence. The Nike ads, which dominate the Samsung station, a bustling hub and the stop for the media centre, are interesting; the stars are displayed in groups of three with names only PR guys can dream up. But there are a couple of anomalies; Gary Neville is there, though of course he’s back home with a busted foot. And so’s Ruud van Nistelrooy, one of the many stars the World Cup will miss.

But the focus in Seoul is on the here and now. There may be glitches, there may be more a few lost souls wandering around with subway maps in hand and perhaps even those who’ve eaten the wrong kind of hot dog. But with Zero Hour less than two days away, everyone’s waiting for the Beautiful Game to show its stuff. Amen to that.