‘What’s the point of working if you can’t do stuff like this?’ England fans descend on Miami

England and Norway fans have flocked to Miami in their tens of thousands to enjoy the football and sunshine

It is not just another morning on Ocean Drive, where brashness mingles with brilliance and grandeur sits unashamedly alongside the grotesque. A Huddersfield Town flag is being hung from one of the art deco hotels that make this area of Miami Beach a living, decadent museum. Two Norwegians in national team shirts cycle past, the woman adjusting a viking helmet before pedalling to catch up. To locals playing volleyball beneath the sand dunes as usual, the sideshow is at once inescapable and remote.

Not even Miami will have seen a party of this nature. Around 30,000 England fans are due to converge here by Saturday but they will be given a run for their money by those baying for Norway, who have offered some of this World Cup’s enduring spectacles. A quarter-final rewards those who have been on the road for a month and is irresistible to the spontaneous too.

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