Players, coaches and staff, check. Media, check, and fans, triple-check. But there's one Aussie presence missing out in Russia that's gone a little under the radar.
No Australian ref was selected for this year's World Cup. Only three other nations - Belgium, Portugal and South Korea - have a team competing at the tournament, but are unrepresented by a countryman wielding the whistle.
It's something overlooked among the month-long celebrations of star players, great goals and VAR controversies but the fact is that, just as it does for players, the World Cup represents the pinnacle for match officials.
Five Australians have reached that pinnacle. These are their stories.
Tony Boskovic - 1974 and 1982
Given referees are informed of their invitation long before playing squads are finalised, it may not be wide of the mark to call Tony Boskovic the World Cup's first Australian, period. Sounds good, doesn't it?
His selection at the 1974 World Cup coincided with the first time that Australia as a team had qualified for the tournament. In their debut appearance, an entirely domestically-based squad faced fellow debutants East Germany, Chile, and the hosts and eventual winners, West Germany.
Also making their first - and only - appearance at the finals were the national teams of Zaire and Haiti. Boskovic wasn't involved in their matches, though. Instead, he hit the jackpot, sharing a pitch with one of the most gifted sides to grace international football.
With their vibrant, intelligent pass-and-move style, the Netherlands' team of the 1970s is widely considered the best team never to win the World Cup. And their final group match, against Bulgaria on 23 June, was assigned to Boskovic.
It was a terrifically sunny, picture-perfect afternoon at the Westfalenstadion in Dortmund. The stadium wasn't quite the cavernous behemoth that it is today - the stands back then only had one tier all the way around, but it still accommodated 54,000 spectators.
The Dutch, captained by the legendary Johan Cruyff, ran out easy 4-1 winners. Boskovic awarded Netherlands two first-half penalties, both covered by Johan Neeskens, while Johnny Rep also made the scoresheet.
To have gone from refereeing state finals in New South Wales to a match featuring such celebrated and globally-famous stars must have been quite something for the Yugoslava-born 41 year-old.
Boskovic missed the 1978 World Cup in Argentina but was recalled for the 1982 tournament in Spain, and was again involved a 4-1 win for a high-profile side. He was the fourth official as Karl-Heinz Rumenigge's hat-trick saw off Chile, then took full charge of Austria's 2-0 win over Algeria the following day.
He'd turned 49 at the start of the year. For the next tournament, due to be held in Mexico, it was time to step aside and let a new guy have a go...
Chris Bambridge - 1986
While Socceroos fans across the country were begrudging the vibrating smartwatch worn by Uruguayan referee Andres Cunha last weekend when Paul Pogba's deflected shot dropped an inch over the line, one Australian may have allowed himself a wry smile - Chris Bambridge could have really used such technology (and a pair of capable linesmen) at Mexico '86.
Australia's second World Cup referee was assigned the opening match in Group D, Spain v Brazil, and it was goalless in Guadalajara when, in the 54th minute, a Spain corner was cleared as far as Real Madrid midfielder, Michel. The 23 year-old unleashed a thunderous drive against underside of the bar, sending the ball rebounding down off the goal line and out again.
In a flash, Bambridge was surrounded by five pleading Spaniards - even the scoreboard flashed 'GOAL!' - but he ignored their calls, denying Michel what would have gone down as one of the great World Cup goals. Replays on TV showed the ball had clearly crossed the line.
At full-time, Spain were left feeling even more hard done by. Bambridge may have disallowed a goal at the other end, as Edinho was adjudged to have used his hand to beat Andoni Zubizarreta, but he had allowed Socrates' headed winner, despite the bushy-haired Brazilian being a fraction offside.
It was Michel's non-goal, though, that reverberated around the world. “Even the most rabid Brazilian fan would agree that the game turned on Bambridge's decision," read the report in the Los Angeles Times.
As it was, Spain recovered to win their other group games against Northern Ireland and Algeria to follow Brazil into the latter stages. And although this was to be Bambridge's only World Cup match, it didn’t kill his reputation.
Two years later, he officiated at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. He was, until his retirement, Football Federation Victoria's Referee Development Manager and an A-League match commissioner. In February, he was honoured at the FFV's annual seminar with a gold award for long services to Victorian football.
Eddie Lennie - 1998
"It was the best experience," said Eddie Lennie in a 2015 chat with Dutch Referee Blog. "To be involved and work with 32 referees from around the world was fantastic. It was the first World Cup that FIFA had all the referees live, work, eat, sleep in the one hotel which bonded many friendships which have still lasted today."
At a time of excellent refs, Lennie found himself in fine company at France '98, with such names as Norway's Rune Pedersen, Switzerland's Urs Meier, and the greatest of all - the Italian six-time FIFA Referee of the Year, Pierluigi Collina.
On the field, Glasgow-born Lennie was appointed to two matches - and, like the games of Boskovic and Bambridge before him, they weren't without incident.
In the first, a Group B clash in Montpellier between Italy and Cameroon, Italy were 1-0 up when, on 43 minutes, Cameroon defender Raymond Kalla slid two-footed into the goalscorer, Luigi Di Biagio. Lennie produced the red card, Italy won 3-0 and Kalla was subsequently banned for two matches.
The second match was between Romania and Tunisia in Group G. It was the game for which, in what has become an enduring and iconic World Cup image, the Romanian squad had, to a man, bleached their hair a fluorescent blonde.
Lennie awarded Tunisia a soft early penalty, allowing Skander Souayeh to convert his team's only goal of the tournament. A frustrated Marius Lacatus then cuffed Tunisia captain Sami Trabelsi round the jaw in open play, but escaped punishment as Lennie missed the incident, and the eleven men found an equaliser.
Lennie hung up his whistle in 2004 and was inducted into the FFA’s Football Hall of Fame in 2007. A greater honour came the following year as he was awarded the medal of the Order of Australia.
But do those five-or-so weeks spent mingling with his peers in France in 1998 top it all? In Lennie's own words, it was the "pinnacle of many years of refereeing around the world."
Mark Shield - 2002 and 2006
Around the time that Chris Bambridge was frustrating Spain at Mexico '86, a football-mad 12 year-old lad in Brisbane had begun reffing junior games.
It wasn't the way Mark Shield had first intended to spend his evenings after school - he had been a player for local team Innisfail Tigers, but was unable to keep pace with the technical development of his teammates. If he'd ever dreamed of one day lacing up his boots and gracing the World Cup, though, those hopes would still be realised - and not just once, but twice.
Having begun refereeing National Soccer League games aged just 22 and gaining seven seasons of experience, he was summoned off to South Korea and Japan to officiate the 2002 World Cup. At 28, he was the youngest of the 36 referees at the tournament by four years.
His only game in the tournament, a 1-1 group stage draw between Tunisia and Belgium in Oita, Japan, was completely unremarkable - just the way any referee overseeing his first match in front of the world would have it.
The number of referees was sliced almost in half at Germany 2006 - from an excessive 36 to 21 - and as a consequence, Shield was assigned two matches.
The first was another Tunisia draw, an entertaining 2-2 with Saudi Arabia at the one year-old new home of Bayern Munich, the Allianz Arena. He was far from the only Australian in town that week as the Socceroos played Brazil in Group F on the same stretch of turf four days later.
This was also the first World Cup in which officials worked in three-man teams who were, mostly, from the same nation. Shield's linesmen were fellow Aussies Nathan Gibson and Ben Wilson, and they returned to over see a 1-1 draw between tournament debutants Angola and Iran in Leipzig.
An awkward and slightly amusing moment came after 22 minutes, when Shield was forced to mercilessly book Angola defender Loco as the poor sod was leaving the pitch on a stretcher, having hurt himself making a clumsy tackle.
Shield's tournament ended in the role of the fourth official for the semi-final between Portugal and France, in which Zinedine Zidane struck the winner - his last goal for Les Bleus.
Further career highlights were still to come for Shield. He oversaw the second leg of the 2006 AFC Champions League final and the 2007 Asian Cup final, entered the FFA Hall of Fame in 2010 and became Australia's national Director of Referees, overseeing training and match appointments.
In 2012 he left football altogether - professionally, at least. In briefly giving playing another try in Mackay for Dolphins FC, Shield had come full circle - only this time, he didn't have to worry about his teammates leaving him behind.
Ben Williams - 2014
For A-League fans who remember Williams as a referee who leant towards the harsher end of the scale, it may not come as a surprise that, as is a common vocation for match officials, away from the pitch Williams is a teacher.
Upon being notified of his inclusion by way of an email from FIFA, he took six months of unpaid leave to prepare fully for what he calls "the biggest sporting event in the world". It would be incorrect to suggest that Williams aimed to make up for that lost time in the classroom by doling out some discipline on the field, but it's fair to to say that he didn't hold back in Brazil.
Two of the ten red cards in the tournament came from his breast pocket. He was the only referee to send off two players, and his 15 bookings were more than any of his colleagues produced.
His first match was Ecuador's 2-1 group stage win over Honduras at the Arena da Baixada in Curitiba, three days before the already-eliminated Socceroos were due to play there against Spain.
Next for Williams came Belgium's clash with South Korea in Group H - and his first red card, issued to Steven Defour for a studs-up challenge on Kim Shin-wook. Defour tried to look innocent but it was the correct call and, in any case, the ten-men regrouped and went on to win through Jan Vertonghen's second-half goal.
Just three days on from that, Williams entered untrodden ground for Australian referees - a World Cup round of 16 match, between Costa Rica and Greece. He handed out eight yellow cards over an epic 120 minutes of tense football, three of them noteworthy.
Two were shown to Costa Rica defender Oscar Duarte, who received his marching orders in the 66th minute. Another, Williams showed to a player who wan't even on the field of play - Costa Rica midfielder Esteban Granados, who had protested a little too much from the bench over the non-award of a penalty for the Central Americans.
Once again, it was the ten men that prevailed. Costa Rica progressed to the quarter-finals on spot-kicks - and Williams, Australia's last man standing, joined them there, as the fourth official for Argentina's win over Belgium.
No Australian match official has been involved so far into a World Cup tournament so in that regard, Williams sits above his predecessors Boskovic, Bambridge, Lennie and Shield at the top of the class.
He quit in 2016 to dedicate himself fully to keeping Canberra's kids in line.
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