Barely nine months after Philipp Lahm hoisted the World Cup trophy into the night air at Rio's Maracana Stadium, the journey starts all over again.
This time the road begins in Asia.
On Thursday evening (AEDT) the Timorese capital of Dili has the honour of hosting the very first match on the march to Moscow when Mongolia visits. Five other qualifiers in India, Cambodia, Chinese Taipei, Sri Lanka and Doha - a neutral venue as troubled Yemen hosts Pakistan – kick off shortly afterwards.
Next month CONCACAF begins its first round fixtures in various locations across the Caribbean but it will be all eyes on Asia as the region's minnows embark on an improbable campaign to reach the 2018 finals.
The six winners of these home-and-away playoffs will join the 34 top-ranked nations for next month's second round draw where, for the first time, the AFC's heavyweight countries will be pitted against some genuine underdogs.
Australia will be one of the countries drawn into eight groups of five with only the group winner certain to progress to what will likely be the penultimate round of qualification.
I say likely because the game's governing body is yet to confirm whether Asia will retain its 4.5 slots with some suggestions floating around that the half slot may be lost in the jostling for the FIFA Presidency.
So, more than presenting just a passing curiosity, football fans in Australia, Japan, Korea and elsewhere will be actively watching the outcome of the first-round matches to see just where their nation will potentially have to travel in a new-format pocked with pitfalls.
With the preliminary stages of the World Cup qualification also doubling as the qualifiers for the 2019 Asian Cup there is much at stake for nations small and large in these early fixtures so it is disappointing to see several hamstrung once again by poor preparation and organisation.
This evening in Timor-Leste should be a moment for national celebration as the country (one of FIFA's newest members) hosts a competitive, senior international for the first time in its relatively young history.
Yet, you'd hardly know it.
I've attempted to call the Federation headquarters for the past several days with no-one simply answering the phone, their 'official website' as provided by FIFA turns up an empty page with an expired domain, the local press has barely carried a single story on the team's preparations and even several of the squad's players are unsure who their coach is.
All this for a nation that lives and breathes football is heartbreaking and symptomatic of the chronic mismanagement that plagues much of Asian football.
Francisco Kalbuadi Lay has run the Federation since its founding in 2002 and during that time has often been presented as a 'colourful' character.
He was a close associate of disgraced former AFC President, Mohammad Bin Hamman, and the .
Both FIFA and the AFC have threatened to ban the TTFL over various infringements in recent years and a host of other nations competing this evening have faced similar situations.
The Nepalese FA was last year subject to 'corrective measures' after FIFA found evidence of 'unappropriated cash movements' while another former Bin Hamman associate, long-serving Sri Lanka supremo Manilal Fernando, was handed a life ban by FIFA in 2013.
Yemen has to play at a neutral venue due to security concerns, the head of the Mongolian FA was handed a five-year ban last year for accepting bribes and there are serious concerns about match-fixing at all levels in Cambodian football.
It's a situation that deeply concerns one former Timorese international and now Australian resident, Alfredo Esteves.
The defender, now heavily involved in raising the profile of Beach Soccer in Australia, made his debut for Timor-Leste in 2004 and was capped a dozen times. He said he is worried about some of the developments in his adopted homeland.
"Football is everything in Timor, you see kids and people of all ages watching foreign leagues from Portugal, Spain and England and people will walk in the streets with the shirts of their favorite teams on.
"This is such an important match because every time Timor plays or enters a tournament it's another step forward but the right conditions are not being given to help raise the standard of football."
"There are some officials who are maybe too concerned with their other jobs and we need the right facilities for younger players to develop and show what they can do."
Kalbuadi, who also doubles as Timor's Tourism Minister, has embarked on a program to tap into the Timorese diaspora with players with roots to the country being called from Brazil, Portugal and even Australia.
Yet in the midst of this program there is no regular, organized local league and the standard of refereeing and coaching remains poor in the nation that sits at 187 on the FIFA rankings.
Four years ago I was in the Nepalese capital of Katmandu as Timor-Leste attempted to qualify for Brazil.
It had to play both matches there due to a lack of suitable facilities at home and had just called former Newcastle Jets player Jesse Pinto into the squad, although his eligibility wasn't confirmed in time for the match.
So, instead of playing he conducted a large portion of the training sessions in what were, literally, flooded cow paddocks, while a team which included relatives of TTFL officials who barely passed as footballers attempted to negotiate an international football tournament which it ultimately lost 7-1 on aggregate.
Four years on Pinto, once a highly-touted youth player who represented Australia at schoolboy level, has retired to join the army in Darwin and a host of new expats have arrived.
I spoke to one of those - based in Thailand - and he told me he hadn't even been called to go to Dili due to a lack of funds but he 'might' go to Mongolia for the reverse fixture.
The stark reality is this: as the youth of Timor dream of an unlikely run to Russia they are being played for fools by those in charge of their nation's footballing fortunes.
