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The host, enjoying a rich vein of creative capacity, starts as the firm favourite and the possibility of a sixth win has already brought optimism from across the streets of Rio to the rainforest-cleared parts of Amazonia, where a few games will be played in newly built stadiums.īrazil’s front three of Fred, Hulk and Neymar can easily shred opponents - irrespective of the cartoonistic ring to their names - with an unbridled attacking game.
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Football and footballers will take over soon from organisation and organisers and the world hardly has any complaints against them. So, despite the spiralling protests (against the economic and social implications), security concerns and behind-schedule infrastructure work, Brazil 2014 promises to be a grand success. Brazil does not see football as a sport… It’s a social activity… It comes from within.” In this country, it is anything but an addiction. In Brazil, winner of five world titles, football, as the cliché stands, has evolved as a way of life and Shobhan Saxena, a journalist based in Sao Paulo, rightly captured the mood in his recent essay for the Open magazine: “After living in Brazil for close to two years, during which the country has been preparing for the World Cup, I have realised that equating football with opium is to misunderstand the sport as well as Brazil. The opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics, which had 204 participating nations, had an audience of 900 million.Īnd this time, the yearning to watch - the chances to be voluntarily bitten and turn into a football zombie - is more, as the 2014 tournament is extra special, marking a return to the land of ‘jogo bonito’ (beautiful game). The 2010 final between Spain and Holland in Johannesburg was seen by 909.6 million people, with each match in the edition averaging 188.4 million viewers. The World Cup, though played by just 32 nations (a fairly big number compared to the 16, a few decades ago), is followed by millions and millions, from every nook and corner of the world and even the International Space Station today. The quadrennial FIFA football feast, usually playing late on our television sets (in India and the subcontinent), finds a way to even things out. Every four years, now and then, we outlast - without an eyelid batting - the simple sleepy souls, who take far too many coffee breaks, but still fail to keep up with us or the game, unfolding thousands of miles and many time zones away. Ayon Sengupta on the course the 2014 World Cup could take.Ī little merciful the world is to us, who are blessed with no discerning skills, but the sole grand ability to stay awake late, with neither rhyme nor reason. The searing South American heat will stifle European teams and tired defences may concede goals.