In the home timeline, the World Cup Finals of 2086 were a sore spot for Italians. A referee missed an obvious off-side call during a game between Italy and Vietnam, costing Italy the game, with a final score of 2-1. While trapped in an alternate where the Soviet Union won the Cold War, Eduardo Caruso used an oblique reference to that event to test whether The Three Sixes was still under Crosstime Traffic's control. The clerk didn't understand what Caruso meant, tipping Caruso off that the store was now in the hands of the Security Police of the Italian People's Republic. Subsequently, Caruso used the World Cup to confirm that the staff members of By the Arch Repairs were indeed from his alternate.