The warmest and coolest host city

Rostov Stadium, the setting of Brazil’s opening match against Switzerland

The two host cities of Volgograd and Rostov lie 500km apart, and are sandwiched between Ukraine and Kazakhstan towards the south of the country. Both average highs of 26.6°C in June, which make them the warmest of the eleven host cities.

Brazil begin their tournament at the Rostov Arena (above) against Switzerland.

As the northernmost host city, St Petersburg, which will host seven games including a semi final and the third-place playoff, tops off at 20°C on average in June, which makes it the coolest. England and Costa Rice have set up base there.

The biggest and smallest Twitter following

In spite of the oversized headwear, Mexico are trending!

The Twitter account for the Mexican national teams, @miseleccionmx, has 5.79 million followers, which is just a little more than the entire population of Sydney. And Denmark.

With 307,000, the @Socceroos have some catching up to do, but that's more than a few other competing teams, and certainly more than Sweden and Costa Rica, who are apparently too cool for this social media thing and don't have a dedicated account for their teams at all.

The longest and shortest national anthems

Bryan Ruiz and Keylor Navas, in it for the long haul

Very important, this one. Make yourself comfortable when Costa Rica get going on their national anthem - some extensive YouTube research has revealed they’ll be singing loud and proud for around 1min 34 secs.

Saving their breath for, you know, the match are Saudi Arabia, done and dusted inside 32 seconds. That's just quicker than England’s 39-second musical burst of off-pitch national pride. Dash to make a coffee and you may well miss a goal.

Fair warning.