Part of the charm of following a World Cup is staying up, or getting up, at ungodly hours to watch a match you would never normally consider. Readers of a certain age may remember the Republic of Ireland against Cameroon at 6:30am in 2002, or England playing Italy at 11pm in 2014 and Japan versus Ivory Coast at 2am.Those have generally been quirks in the schedule rather than the norm, and surely the best thing about World Cups is watching three or four games back to back from early afternoon until late at night, which has rarely been the case this summer.This World Cup, of course, has been particularly challenging for European audiences, not just for kick-off times but the inconsistent scheduling. Some nights you get a game at 5pm or 6pm, some nights you wait until 9pm or 10pm. Saturday’s slate of fixtures was great, but all took place between 10pm and 6am.And if you thought it had been tricky enough to get into a routine during the group stage, good luck this week. The last 32 got underway on Sunday and across the 16 matches in this round, there are 13 different kick-off times. Thirteen!They are: 5pm, 6pm, 7pm, 8pm, 9pm, 9.30pm, 10pm, 11pm, 12am, 1am, 2am, 2.30am and 4am.The point about overnight matches is not really a complaint — the rest of the world has had enough of Europeans complaining about things like this — just a statement of fact. It has made watching this World Cup far trickier than normal. But not impossible.It can be done, and surely anyone with a subscription to The Athletic wants the best World Cup experience. Aside from actually being in the host countries, the best way of getting the usual World Cup experience has to be to go to bed after the match that finishes closest to midnight, wake up the next morning, avoid your phone and immediately start watching the games back on the BBC’s iPlayer or ITVx. (ITVx provides a spoiler-free experience and iPlayer tries to do something similar, but there have still been three or four occasions when thumbnails and timeline markers have ruined matches.)