Wrong route to Rostov

A group of Swiss World Cup fans booked a hotel in the wrong Russian city, confusing Rostov-on-Don where Switzerland played Brazil on Sunday, with Rostov Veliky, 1281 km (795 miles) away.

Russian media reported the fans called police when they could not find the hotel, while finding the same street name in the World Cup host city.

"Foreign tourists who have come to support Switzerland called us and said they were looking for a hotel," local police said in a statement on Monday.

"Our translator told them they were confused in the difficulties of translating Russian geographical names and that they booked a hotel in Rostov Veliky."

Rostov's police press service told Russian media it has employed professional translators and volunteers who speak Spanish, English, Arabic and French for the period of the World Cup.

ENGLAND WIN BREAKS 2018 TV RECORD

England's last-gasp win against Tunisia at the football World Cup was Britain's most-watched television programme of 2018, attracting a peak audience of 18.3 million, according to the BBC on Tuesday.

Monday evening's game in Volgograd, which was decided by captain Harry Kane's injury-time header, had a 69.2 percent audience share at its peak, beating last month's royal wedding.

Around three million requests were also made to stream it online, making it the highest ever live audience for an online BBC broadcast.

England won 2-1 and will next play Panama on Sunday.

THUNDERSTORM FLOODS NOVOGOROD STREETS

Fans in Nizhny Novgorod have been basking in sunshine on the banks of the Volga river since the World Cup began, but the idyll shattered briefly on Tuesday when a thunderstorm flooded the medieval city's streets.

About half an hour of heavy rain quickly built up rivers of water, bringing traffic to a standstill in parts and leaving some motorists stranded.

Due to the presence of a less-than-perfect drainage system, the water quickly rose above some cars' wheels in places, leaving drivers and passengers to try and bail out any way they could.

While the flooding briefly dampened spirits at a hilltop fan zone, the sun soon came out again, calm returned. "It's not the first time - we're used to it," said one shopkeeper, watching motorists open their bonnets for engines to dry out.

SAUDI TEAM'S PLANE CATCHES FIRE

The plane carrying Saudi Arabia's World Cup team suffered a fire in one of its engines as the players flew to Rostov-on-Don for their next match, the Saudi football federation said Monday.

The aircraft landed safely after what one of the Saudi players called a "simple malfunction".

"It was a small fire in one of the engines, the right engine, but the plane landed safely," association president Ahmad Al Harbi told Saudi sports TV channel KSA.

One of the Saudi players, Hatan Bahbir, said in a video on the federation's Twitter account: "We arrived safely and we are all fine... it was a simple malfunction'."

In the video, someone off-camera asks him if he was scared. He replies: "No, no. Well, of course we were scared a bit, but thank God."