As the All Whites make their way to Krestovsky Stadium on Sunday morning (NZT), one of the younger squad members will give a speech.
While the team bus winds its way through St Petersburg, across Vasilyevsky Island and over the Neva river, the nominated player will brief his teammates about the history of the stadium, and the background of the city they are playing in.
It's a tradition started under coach Anthony Hudson, to add to the sense of the occasion.
But it's likely tomorrow's bus journey won't be long enough, as one could talk for hours about the travails of this metropolis and its people.
From Peter the Great's construction of this magnificent city, during which an estimated 100,000 labourers perished, to the Bolshevik revolution at the Winter Palace in 1917. The city was renamed Petrograd, then Leningrad - in honour of Vladimir Lenin - and also had to survive the unprecedented Nazi siege during World War II. Residents were cut off for almost 900 days, resulting in mass starvation, before the Red Army finally broke through in January 1944.