Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

Inside the Match of the Day camp

• Paul Armstrong, Editor, Match of the Day
• 8 Jun 06, 11:33 AM

BERLIN - Not long to go now til the hype can be interrupted by the outbreak of football. I've been in Berlin since Saturday but even here - thanks to 24 hours news and www.bbc.co.uk/sport it's been possible to tap into the round-the-clock metatarsal coverage.

We're having to rely on eye-witness reports to tell us about the numbers of flags flying from cars, but we can sense expectations growing. The German media are almost as obsessed with Ballack as we are with Rooney: did he really slate Jurgen Klinsmann's tactics, did he miss training as a mere "precaution" or - - was something worse afoot? Or indeed acalf.

I'm typing this in the area adjoining , overlooking the , and after four days of awful weather (it was snowing on Sunday in Baden-Baden) it finally feels like summer.

Yesterday, I went out to various locations around Berlin with Gary Lineker as he filmed the links for our opening sequence. Continuity became a little tricky: if you watch carefully at about 4 o'clock on Friday, you may notice that he's bathed in sunshine by the Reichstag, then sheltering from a monsoon at the Olympic Stadium.

A feature film director would probably have burst into tears in those circumstances, but by the time we've dressed the sequence up with a trawl through the World Cup archive and some music chosen by someone young and trendy, all will be well. Or so we hope.

This is quite a tricky technical operation in that most of our video operation and production team is in Munich, but the presenters, pundits, and studio directors and editors are in Berlin.

This two-pronged approach allows us access to everything that will be made available to the world's broadcasters in the International Broadcast Centre in Munich, while transmitting from a studio with an iconic backdrop.

Gary & co. will go to the stadiums for a few big live games like England v Paraguay on Saturday, but for the most part it should feel rather as the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ's operation in Paris did in 1998 with the landmarks of a major world city behind us. If anything, the shots here are even more impressive.

We're very keen to avoid clichΓ©s, and to show Germany as it is in the 21st century.

Berlin's chequered 20th century is unavoidable as you travel around - we filmed at a section of the yesterday and there's a stunning Holocaust Memorial close to our studio - but, having only been here briefly since a visit in 1988, the city has changed almost beyond recognition.

Our hotel is in the old East, but where there were no shop fronts, illuminated signs or many visible signs of life back then, there are now pavement cafΓ©s, every kind of restaurant imaginable and a real sense of wanting to stage a world party.

Security and fan behaviour is clearly something we'll have to monitor, as will our colleagues from Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ news on the floor below us, but we all hope we just spend the next month talking about football, which is, after all, the reason we're here!