Road trip diary

How I Watched the World Cup in My Car on a Road Trip

Without missing a single match, thanks to a little Android box I bought on a whim.

By [[AUTHOR_NAME]]·[[DATE]]·4 min read

I'm an England supporter, the kind of fan who makes time for every World Cup. This year the tournament is in North America, and most of the games I'd been longing to watch kicked off very early in the morning or late at night for us, which made things difficult. On top of that, I'd already booked a trip with some friends for the group stage, and there was no cancelling it. The one match I definitely would not miss was England vs. Croatia, and as always with me, I wasn't going to let a single minute of a game like that go by. So one thought kept nagging at me before we set off: I wanted a way to watch the World Cup in the car.

The box I bought on a whim

Truthfully, I bought the box on a whim just a few days before we left, without high hopes. A friend had mentioned the Carlinkit TBox Ultra 3, and said that once it's in your car it basically adds an Android box to your dash, so the apps you already use to watch football would work on it too.

It turned out to be much easier to pair than I thought. I plugged in the USB cable, and my car's screen brought up its own Android desktop, basically like having an Android phone built into the dashboard. I could install any app I wanted right from there, and YouTube was on in no time. I connected my phone's hotspot, downloaded a couple of live football apps, which for me were BBC iPlayer and ITVX, logged in, and there it was, a tap away.

England vs. Croatia, parked by the coast

The day it proved its worth was England vs. Croatia. We were on our way to the coast, and kickoff landed right in the middle of that leg of the drive. So we did the obvious thing. We timed it, found a spot with no one around, and parked with about ten minutes to spare before the game. I opened the sunroof and the doors, and we all settled into our seats and the doorways while the players walked out. The wind blew through the car, and nobody said a word until the referee's whistle. England won 4-2, with a stunning go-ahead goal. We piled out of the car and into a hug, the only car for what felt like a hundred metres, shouting for joy.

That was the moment I realised this beat watching at home by a mile.

What I do when it's my turn to drive

When it was my turn to drive, I didn't touch the screen. I've been driving long enough to know where the line is, so with the wheel in my hands my eyes stayed on the road and the match was audio only, the commentary coming through the car speakers like a radio call. I didn't miss the score or the rhythm of the game, and there's real satisfaction in driving along with the commentary running.

Later a friend took over the driving and I settled into the passenger seat, just in time for another game. We hit a stretch of traffic that was crawling, the kind that usually drives everyone up the wall. That day was different. We sat there watching, and whenever one of us missed a bit of the action, the other filled him in.

Football every day, all the way

The best thing about those few days was that the group stage had football every day, sometimes three or four matches when it was busy, so the tournament came along with us the whole way. We drove the coastal road, ate by the roadside looking out over the sea, spent a night in a small village up in the hills, and made a side trip to a waterfall the next morning. Whenever a match was due, we pulled in somewhere and watched it together, then carried on. England's dull 0-0 with Ghana we caught from the car parked outside our guesthouse, and that one really was a snooze. The night they beat Panama 2-0 to top the group was one to remember.

Was it a holiday or a football tour?

Back home, my mates gave me some stick about whether it had been a holiday or a football tour. After thinking about it, I decided I hadn't shortchanged either one, which is what counts. The funny thing is that the box I picked up almost at random, and barely gave a second thought, ended up being far more of a companion on the trip than I expected. Up next for England is DR Congo, and I'm already working out where to park for it.