My first World Cup was in Italy in 1990 as a 20-year-old fan. Since then, I’ve been to another eight tournaments as a journalist. The nine competitions have taken me everywhere from the Amazon to Tokyo to Hitler’s former Olympic Stadium in Berlin.

I saw David Beckham get sent off against Argentina in 1998, had a deep conversation with a Russian policeman using the language apps on our phones in 2018, and walked the battlefield at Stalingrad with England fans. I’ve been to hundreds of games – including a handful I’ll never forget, the best of which was probably the last World Cup final, France v Argentina. But as well as watching some glorious (and not so glorious) football, the tournament has also helped me understand the world.

Here’s some of what I’ve seen and learned since Italia ’90.

WORLD CUP 1990:

When my friends and I got off at Milan station, the first thing I saw at a World Cup was a lone Cameroon fan wrapped in his country’s flag. We’d been on the train during the tournament’s opening match between unknown Cameroon and the world champions, Diego Maradona’s Argentina. We were curious to find out how many goals Argentina had won by.

As we walked into town behind the fan, every passing car tooted at him in tribute. That’s when we realised Cameroon had beaten Maradona.

Their 38-year-old forward Roger Milla, who had been playing for a waiters’ team on an island in the Indian Ocean, scored four goals in that tournament. England only just knocked them out in the quarter-finals, but everyone agreed that soon an African team would win the World Cup. It hasn’t happened. Looking back, Cameroon’s brilliance wasn’t the start of Africa’s rise in football. It was the end.

WORLD CUP 1994:

I had commuted between Foxborough Stadium and my place in Boston. In the city, the World Cup didn’t seem to exist. During the tournament, I went with a friend, a fellow journalist, to a Red Sox baseball game, and chatted with the fans sitting around us. When we said we were covering the World Cup, they asked what it was.

Only the immigrants cared. I was in downtown Boston the day Brazil beat the hosts 1-0 in the last 16. At the final whistle, the city’s streets instantly filled with tens of thousands of Brazilians in yellow shirts. It could have been Rio de Janeiro. When the World Cup returns to the US next summer, Americans will care more. Since 1994, soccer has conquered the last blank spots on the world map.

WORLD CUP 1998:

This was the last tournament dominated by hooliganism – almost all of it English. Before England v Tunisia, English fans skirmished for days with locals in Marseille. A debate began about banning England from tournaments.

For England v Romania in Toulouse, the city practically went into lockdown. A colleague who had been assigned to “hooliewatch” – a major occupation of English journalists back then – grew so angry with the thugs he was watching that he began policing them himself. It helped that he was 6’4”. He marched up to a small English hooligan who was kicking a parked car and asked: “What do you think you’re doing?”

“They’re French, innit,” explained the hooligan. “You’re in France!” shouted my colleague.

Hooligans shaped the world’s image of England that summer. For many foreigners, that skinhead chucking stones in Marseille was England. It’s hard to imagine today. Modern World Cups are about peace and love.

WORLD CUP 2002:

Ronaldo (the bald Brazilian, not the gel-haired Portuguese) was too good for the World Cup. His double in the final against the Germans was routine for him. Brazil in 2002 were the only side I’ve seen win a World Cup without ever being truly tested.

After the final, while his teammates cavorted around wrapped in national flags and Jesus T-shirts, Ronaldo was the only point of stillness. Despite sporting the world’s worst haircut – with a sort of moustache sprouting from the front of his otherwise shaven head – he was the picture of dignity. He wandered alone around the pitch, consoling the Germans.

He had achieved his life’s goal, and now he wanted to experience it with a clear head. It was the best World Cup celebration I’ve seen.

WORLD CUP 2006:

Italy beat the hosts Germany 2-0 in the semi-final, and German fans seemed happy to lose. That night, police in Berlin had to stop people throwing themselves into the Spree river. The fans weren’t trying to drown themselves – they were just partying. Days later, on the morning of the final, a strange legion formed on Berlin’s Unter den Linden avenue. Half a million white-shirted young Germans had come out to thank their team of losers.

Germany had always been the Darth Vader of World Cups, the villain who killed the beautiful teams: Hungary in 1954, Holland in 1974, France in 1982. German fans were sick of ugly winning. Finally, they got to be loveable losers.

And most of us foreigners had learned to love them. The English and everyone else had stopped confusing World Cups with world wars. I must admit that has taken some spice out of the tournament.

WORLD CUP 2010:

Poor South Africa had planned on hosting a budget World Cup, but FIFA bullied it into building lots of “world-class” stadiums it didn’t need, in cities without serious ­football clubs, like Polokwane. The north-western town hosted four World Cup matches, all group games: Algeria-Slovenia (0-1), France-Mexico (0-2), Greece-Argentina (0-2), and as a grand finale, Paraguay-New Zealand (0-0).

In 2024 I went to see what the World Cup had left behind in Polokwane. I found a low-slung town overlooked by one magnificent structure: the 48,000-seat Peter Mokaba Stadium, finer than Anfield. I went to watch a local derby there, and was confused. As I walked up, I couldn’t see any other spectators. The game kicked off in front of about 1,000 people. Imagine if South Africa had taken the money, cement and labour meant for stadiums and built homes for people who lived in shacks.

WORLD CUP 2014:

I chose the wrong semi-final. I was in Sao Paulo for Holland v Argentina, so I watched Brazil’s 1-7 defeat to Germany on TV in a bar. The TV pictures showed people in the crowd weeping. At half-time, with the score 0-5, I walked down Sao Paulo’s Avenida Paulista to see how the rest of Brazil was coping. In every bar I passed, people in canary yellow shirts were laughing their heads off. Their team had become the clowns of the tournament.

A few days later, I went for a stroll on Copacabana beach with a European diplomat. This man loved Brazil. I asked him how he’d experienced the 1-7. He said: “It was awful. I felt so embarrassed for the Brazilians.” He explained that the country felt inferior in almost everything. It only had one source of international pride – futebol.

WORLD CUP 2018:

The tournament’s opening game was the “Petrol Derby” – Russia v Saudi Arabia. When Vladimir Putin rose to speak before kick-off, the crowd applauded for about 10 seconds. With a smirk on his Botoxed face, he talked about football spreading love. But the home fans’ attention soon wandered, and his droning was drowned out by their chatter. The biggest cheer came when he finished.

Then he settled down in his VIP box, chatting and laughing with his companions, Saudi’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) and FIFA president Gianni Infantino. It was a vision of a new non-western world order.

The West no longer mattered. Russia had beaten England and other western bidders to host the tournament. The effect was enhanced by the names on the advertising boards around the pitch: Gazprom, Qatar Airways, South Korea’s Kia Motors.

Russia beat the slapstick Saudis 5-0. It hardly mattered. Putin and MBS had won something bigger than the World Cup: the global power struggle.

WORLD CUP 2022:

Harry Kane went into every match knowing which side of the goal he’d shoot to if he got a penalty. In the days before the game, he’d practise exactly that kick. Any keeper facing him for a penalty had to pick a side randomly. Good luck: a well-struck Kane kick was practically unstoppable.

So when England won a penalty against France in the quarterfinal, he smashed it routinely into the right-hand side of the net.

No matter that it was against the keeper who knew him best, France’s Hugo Lloris, his Tottenham teammate for the previous nine years. They must have faced each other over countless meaningless penalties at Spurs’ training ground in Enfield.

But with about ten minutes left to play and England trailing 2-1, they were awarded a second penalty. This was Kane’s moment of truth. If England beat France, they faced an eminently winnable semi-final against Morocco. A second converted penalty could give them a clear run to immortality.

Now Kane faced a dilemma. He had already shown Lloris his penalty strategy for the night: shoot to the right. Should he do it again? Instead he decided to blast at the top of the net. If that shot is on target, it’s almost guaranteed to go in, even if the keeper guesses correctly.

Kane’s shot flew over the bar, Kylian Mbappé laughed, and England were out.

To make things worse, Kane netted his next 30 penalties.

Simon Kuper is a Financial Times journalist and author of World Cup Fever: A Footballing Journey in Nine Tournaments, published by Profile Books priced £20 and out now