FOMO led to family's World Cup 'holiday of a lifetime'

A small family trip to the United States to soak up the World Cup atmosphere has grown to 13-strong after members of the group were worried about FOMO - fear of missing out.

Maxine Handford from Wirral said the family first came up with the idea while "sat in the pub" three years ago and set about planning the holiday.

What started as something planned for a small number of people soon grew as more family members and friends feared they would regret it if they did not join the trip.

"It's an absolute holiday of a lifetime," said Maxine, who said the group was touring pubs and Boxparks across the country to take in the atmosphere.

"So three years ago when my husband knew it was America hosting some of the games, we started to save," she said.

"We started to save.. starting with £50 each," she said.

As the rest of the family became aware of the plan, the idea spread, Maxine said.

"My husband was doing this with my two boys and my brother, and then from there, I think it was a little bit, 'I don't want to miss out on this' and it just expanded to 13 of us.

"So we knew it was going to be in America, Mexico, and Canada but we didn't know where exactly what states... we just knew we wanted to travel to America and hoped that where the games were, we were actually going to be there.

"We knew we wouldn't be able to get into the games because they would be thousands so we planned where we could watch them in bars and fan parks.

"It was something I wanted to enjoy with my children, who are adults now themselves, and we offered it to everyone [in the family] and the saving continued," she said.

Finally, after a full three years in the planning, the group of family and friends arrived in Miami where they watched the opening ceremony and Mexico v South Africa match in a Mexican bar.

The group have since travelled to Las Vegas, and LA - where Maxine described the box parks as "bouncing" for the Scotland v Haiti match - and they will be in Yosemite National Park to watch the England game on Wednesday.

"As well as sightseeing, we've got the privilege of these huge games and with America being the host country as well... we just knew the atmosphere was going to be electric."

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