\n<\/p>\n
Gus started researching this year’s collection in early 2025 when Uzbekistan emerged as a frontrunner in the AFC Asian qualifiers.<\/p>\n
From that point on he was constantly checking results and tables to monitor the progress of nations with difficult to source beers.<\/p>\n
After ticking off the easier countries, Gus used every contact he had to complete the set.<\/p>\n
For some, like Panama, he got lucky. He was on holiday in Florida and found a beer by Panamanian craft brewery Casa Bruja.<\/p>\n
“Iraq was a headache to figure out, but I ended up spending \u00a330 to buy a bottle off a guy in Poland who went to Iraq a few years ago and brought a bottle back as a souvenir,” said Gus.<\/p>\n
“For countries where people don’t drink, like Qatar and Saudi Arabia, I got non-alcoholic malt beverages which are as close to beer as you can get over there considering they’re brewed with barley malt.”<\/p>\n
The Iranian community in Finchley, north London, helped Gus out, but Qatar proved trickier.<\/p>\n
“I had to trade some rare English beers with a bloke from Finland for a can of Fizzin from Qatar, and I traded a Panamanian beer with another collector for a bottle of Moussy from Saudi Arabia,” explained Gus.<\/p>\n
There are even beers from countries that didn’t qualify like Costa Rica and Guatemala, bought when the opportunity arose just to be on the safe side.<\/p>\n
With friends bringing him beers back from Curacao, Jordan and Algeria – the latter found in a shop in northern Paris – Gus says half of his collection was sourced overseas.<\/p>\n
A non-alcoholic pineapple flavoured malt drink from Iraq was the final beer to arrive, just two weeks ago.<\/p>\n
After spending about \u00a3250 on the 48-beer haul, will Gus be savouring or saving his collection?<\/p>\n
“I’ll be drinking each beer once that team has been eliminated from the competition, basically as a toast to their participation and failure at winning the tournament,” he said.<\/p>\n
Like many England fans, Gus won’t be travelling to the most expensive World Cup in history.<\/p>\n
“I would love to have gone to some games,” he said. “But the costs of flights, hotels and matches were too much of a deterrent for me.”<\/p>\n
Gus said this will probably be his last World Cup challenge as sourcing 48 beers has been “too much hassle” – but he may give Euro 2028 a go.<\/p>\n
“That’s only 24 teams so it’s much easier to collect. Well, unless Andorra or San Marino qualify, then I wouldn’t mind a couple of jaunts to countries I’ve never visited before.” <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gus started researching this year’s collection in early 2025 when Uzbekistan emerged as a frontrunner in the AFC Asian qualifiers.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2269,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}