Destination Brazil

by Derek Van Diest

Marc, Derek, Rod and Chris are part of the Canadian contingent off to Brazil for the 2014 FIFA World Cup. — Photo by Evelyn Van Diest

Attending the 2014 World Cup was a subject first broached when Brazil was awarded the tournament.

If you’re going to attend the greatest spectacle in sports, what better place to do it than in the country most passionate about the game?

Brazilians are obsessed with the World Cup and have been since hosting the first post-war tournament in 1950.

The Maracana stadium in Rio de Janeiro is the Mecca of soccer.

It’s where we will be on June 18 when Chile and Spain clash in a Group B encounter, which will go a long way into dictating what team moves on to the second stage of the tournament.

It’s not unheard of to see the defending champions bow out at the group stage. Isn’t that right Italy and France?

That will be one of eight games our group will be attending.

What started out as a trip to follow the Chilean national team around Brazil turned into an excursion through seven cities around the country.

It was a result of good fortune during the FIFA World Cup ticket lottery process and persistence on our part.

I will be travelling with three friends, Rod, Chris and Marc, to Brazil, where we hope to run into a couple of other acquaintances.

There is expected to be a strong Edmontonian contingent at the tournament, which will have a large Canadian presence.

Despite not having a team at the event, according to FIFA, Canadians have purchased the fifth highest number of tickets for the tournament outside of the host country.

The United States leads the way with the highest number of tickets purchased by foreigners, dispelling the myth Americans don’t care about soccer.

England is next, followed by Germany, Australia, Canada, France, Colombia, Switzerland, Japan and Argentina.

My World Cup adventure will begin in Brasilia on June 15 with Switzerland vs Ecuador.

Rod and Chris will be attending Chile’s opening match against Australia on June 13 in Cuiaba, taking a 15-hour bus trip each way into the gateway of the Amazon, after landing in the Brazilian capital.

The four of us will reconvene in Brasilia and we’ll travel as a group to Belo Horizonte to watch Belgium take on Algeria in a Group H match.

Belgium is expected to be one of the tournament dark horses and could go a long way having been drawn into a favourable group.

From Belo Horizonte, we move on to Rio for the battle of the Rojas between Chile and Spain.

Both teams refer to themselves as ‘La Roja’ (The Red) and a campaign was launched in Chile that the winner gets exclusive rights to the name.

Chile will go into the game believing they can defeat the reigning World Cup champions, having given Spain all they could handle in exhibition games leading up to the tournament.

The Chileans will also have a strong fan base behind them, led by the rescued miners who were part of an inspirational commercial urging their national team.

“We want to show the world that to a Chilean, nothing is impossible,” says Mario Sepulveda, who spent 70 days trapped in a collapsed mine with 32 of his colleagues. “Spain is difficult, Holland is difficult. The group of death doesn’t scare us. We don’t care about death, because death, we have beaten before!”

It’s pretty stirring stuff for a Chilean.

http://www.edmontonsun.com/2014/05/29/chilean-miners-inspire-in-breathtaking-world-cup-commercial

From Rio we move on to northern Brazil to Recife, where we’ll see Italy take on Costa Rica. We have the Italian member of our group to thank for that.

Since we were in that part of the country, we decided to head a little further north to Fortaleza to watch Germany face the Black Stars of Ghana, who were a penalty kick away from making it to the semifinals four years ago in South Africa.

From Fortaleza, it’s south to Sao Paulo to see Chile and the Netherlands clash in a game which will likely dictate which team makes it out of the group.

After that, the trip is a little open ended.

We have tickets to follow Chile into the knockout phase of the tournament all the way to the semifinal.

(Just a note to my boss; I won’t be coming home on time if Chile makes it through to the semifinal.)

Along the way, we also have tickets for the first-round encounter between Germany and the United States.

The adventure begins Tuesday as half our group heads to New York and the other half through Florida on the way to Brazil.

Hope I packed properly.