‘We’re going to be in an unreal, mad World Cup time zone’: Kelly Cates on presenting in Salford at 2am

“B efore every tournament there are always concerns,” Kelly Cates says as she approaches her fifth World Cup as a television and radio presenter. “There’s always something everybody’s worried about. This time I worry about the humidity and the altitude for the players and there are political concerns, obviously. “But there are also concerns that it’s not going to feel like a World Cup . In the US, they probably see that as a good thing. They probably see it as: ‘We’re going to make it better.’ Whereas we’re looking at it from a more traditional point of view, thinking: ‘Why are you going to change something that’s so amazing in the first place?’” Cates, who will present World Cup games on BBC television and Radio 5 Live, worked in Russia in 2018 and Qatar four years later, and she does not try to sidestep that we are about to be immersed in a tournament that takes place mostly in Donald Trump’s America. It starts in Mexico City on Thursday, and features 13 games each in Mexico and Canada, but the bulk of it will be played in the US . There is widespread antipathy towards America in Mexico, Canada and Europe and the tournament will unfold against the US’s war in Iran as well as the absurd double act of Trump and Fifa’s grovelling president, Gianni Infantino , who has allowed obscene ticket and travel prices to soar. …