"Game of Thrones" and Faberge eggs: FIFA showed the official TV screensaver for the 2018 World Cup in Russia

FIFA has presented the official TV screensaver of the World Cup in Russia, which we will see several times a day for a whole month. While she has not had time to get bored, let's look at her more closely, the benefit of this abundance of references and Easter eggs is something to catch the inquisitive Russian gaze. In addition, it turned out very cool, stylish and did without the annoying splint — nesting dolls, balalaika, bears and other "national symbols", which in our God-saved fatherland are officially broadcast as elements of national identity. Russia in the eyes of an enlightened European is an Empire, space, great literature, glorious traditions and luxurious architecture. We love this.

Let's analyze the video by frames. If we missed something, write to us in the comments on social networks, agreed?

The video opens with a panorama of the embankment with a football field in the center. It looks like a direct reference to the updated "Luzhniki" with their walking paths and trees in the park, and all these gold inlays and patterns look like elegant ceremonial weapons and ammunition of Russian officers of the XIX century. If you only knew how happy the eye of your humble servant is!

Through the fog of the prospects of the Russian national team to get at least out of the group, the ball flies over the famous St. Petersburg Palace Bridge. Rostral columns from the arrow of Vasilievsky Island are located along the edges of the frame.

Ships are sailing along the amalgam of the Neva (maybe Peter I's boat is even stuck somewhere?), and in the distance you can clearly see the Bronze Horseman and the Admiralty building. The central place in the frame is occupied by a huge pyramid with an interactive top, inside which, as in a magic ball, the figures of famous football players and national teams-winners of past championships are broadcast. We will see this pyramid more than once, and it very much resembles the pyramid of Meereen from "Game of Thrones". And you probably noticed winged harpies on the sails of ships. A coincidence? We don't think. Although this may be a reference to the icy peaks of Kamchatka volcanoes. Russia is great — there are many symbols in it that can be elegantly written into any concept.

Against the background of a golden football diamond (maybe Saudi princes play with such balls?) Sputnik, a word that entered the world language from Russian, flies into the frame. We feel proud, we look carefully further.

Next, we are shown the national cultural diversity of Russia: in the frame we see the Kazan Kul Sharif mosque, a Tibetan temple and a huge red dragon. Daenerys Targaryen is clearly hiding somewhere — this thought does not leave. In the distance to the left stands the Dmitrievskaya Tower of the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin.

Against the background of the gigantic sculpture "Motherland", a rocket takes off from the Volgograd Mamaev Kurgan into the sky, as if created by designers from the Warhammer universe. It looks unrealistically cool.

A steampunk firebird from Russian fairy tales bursts into the frame, holding a football in its claws. Dear Igor Akinfeev, hold the balls just as tightly, we ask you with the whole country. Do not repeat your mistakes, as in that memorable match with Korea at the last World Cup.

A bird flies past a structure very reminiscent of the Orenburg Water Tower built in 1928, architect Ryangin (but this is not accurate. What are your guesses?) and some kind of monument in the style of Soviet constructivism. In the center of the composition is a red troika of horses: This is a classic Russian troika, which we are all slowly harnessing, and the "Bathing of the Red Horse" by Petrov-Vodkin, and an obvious reference to the sculptural group of the fountain "Four Seasons" on the Moscow Manezhnaya Square by Zurab Tsereteli.

No less rapidly than the firebird, a steam locomotive bursts into the frame - a symbol of the most powerful industrialization of tsarist Russia at the beginning of the XX century, from which the eyes of the whole world were climbing. Sviridov's suite "Time Ahead" automatically starts playing in my head, which, although written much later, is very closely associated with industrial growth.

Past the colored caramel-fair domes of St. Basil's Cathedral, the camera flies out to a whole scattering of symbols close to every Russian person. Russian Russian Theater, Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, monument to Yuri Gagarin, Kremlin Wall, entrance arch of Gorky Park, sophisticated Russian ballerina who looks like a dancer from a music box (greetings to Diaghilev and his "Russian Seasons"!), and a rapidly flying train. Maybe it was Anna Karenina who once threw herself under such a thing?

After the happy face of the triumphant Iker Casillas, a ball encrusted with precious stones appears in the magic dome of the pyramid across the entire width of the screen. We got close to the main idea of FIFA, which she tried to convey in the video. The ball is the famous Faberge egg of the world—famous jeweler, whose works are associated with the greatness and luxury of imperial Russia.