Here’s Michael Hann’s musical review of the opening ceremony:

It was, perhaps, inevitable that Robbie Williams would begin the 2018 World Cup opening ceremony by singing Let Me Entertain You, rather than Party Like a Russian, the 2016 single that reportedly caused a certain amount of disquiet in the titular nation. It was certainly a robust opening for British viewers, but one wondered if it had quite the impact for the rest of the world: Williams’ s stardom has been largely confined to Europe, and isn’t of the wattage it once was. Still, nothing hung around long enough to get dull – Let Me Entertain You faded into the soprano Aida Garifulina warbling on the back of a “firebird” for a few seconds before Williams returned for a snippet of Feel, befoe Garifulina joined him for, inevitably, Angels. “And through it all she offers me protection,” Williams sang, echoing the prayers of flair players towards referees.

The whole thing – compact, based around partial songs rather than a dragged-out epic – felt based not on the self-conscious pomposity of Olympics opening ceremonies, but the tightly scheduled wham-bam of Super Bowl halftime shows. Albeit this was a Super Bowl halftime show done on a fraction of the budget. There were no bonkers mass dance displays, but there were women in some Fifa-approved bastardised national costumes. And a man in a wolf suit giving high fives to Ronaldo – the original one – and a child identified in Fifa’s official schedule only as “kid”. Presumably all those Fifa riches were heading straight for grassroots football projects even as Ronaldo and “kid” grinned awkwardly at each other.

It was short, it was painless. And it was completely pointless.