As Russia puts the finishing touches to the carefully manicured fields that will host the World Cup from next week, people around the globe are playing soccer on a surprising variety of makeshift pitches. Off the coast of an island in southern Thailand, they play on a floating platform; in the mountains of northern Italy, they kick about in the snow – images captured by Reuters photographers around the world. Here: Local residents play soccer on the top floor of a parking garage in Jakarta, Indonesia, May 4, 2018. (Photo by Darren Whiteside/Reuters)

People play "Palin", a traditional ritual and ancestral Mapuche game played with curved sticks called "Chuecas" and a wooden ball, during a meet on Dia de la Raza (Day of the Races), also known as Columbus Day in Vina del Mar, Chile October 11, 2015. (Photo by Rodrigo Garrido/Reuters)

Pupils from St Teilo’s Catholic Primary School in Tenby, South Wales, perform a scene from their Nativity play in the second decade of December 2023. The three kings, played by Jack Rigby, Santos Basilnomo and Tommy Leggett, pretended to follow a star on South Beach, a stone’s throw from the school. (Photo by Joann Randles/Cover Images)

A frightened maid, played by Phoebe Hodgson, knocks a bust off a tall pedestal while dusting, in a scene from the play “Queen High” at the Queen's Theatre. (Photo by Sasha/Getty Images). 1926

People play on a beach along the Arabian Sea on a hot summer day in Mumbai, India, April 29, 2016. (Photo by Danish Siddiqui/Reuters)

Internally displaced Syrian children play inside a refugee camp in the Hama countryside, Syria January 1, 2016. (Photo by Ammar Abdullah/Reuters)

A British woman plays a piano designed especially for people who are confined to bed. Date: 1935. (Photo by Mary Evans Picture Library/Caters News)

Gelada baboons (Theropithecus gelada) play in their enclosure at the Zoo in Zurich, Switzerland, Wednesday, May 15, 2013. (Photo by Steffen Schmidt/Keystone/AP Photo)