The 2014 FIFA World Cup is the 20th FIFA World Cup Tournament, with the final games taking place in Brazil from June 12 to July 13, 2014. The first match to open the tournament will take place in Sao Paulo at the Arena Corinthians, and the final will take place in Rio de Janeiro at the Maracanã stadium.
Selecting a venue
According to the rules for the rotation of the continents for the world championships, the 2014 football tournament was supposed to be held in South America, where Brazil was the only candidate, since all other candidate countries supported her candidacy. True, Colombia made some attempts to compete with Brazil, but its candidacy was unconditionally rejected, since this country irresponsibly approached the organization of the 1986 World Cup and could not cope with its obligations, and the championship was re-held in Mexico.
Tournament emblem
The official symbol of the 2014 FIFA World Cup was the Inspiration emblem, designed by the Brazilian agency Africa. This emblem was presented to the commission during the 2010 FIFA World Cup at a ceremony in Johannesburg.
According to the results of the voting among the fans, the official ball of the tournament was a ball from Adidas called Brazuca.
Participants
A total of 32 teams will take part in the final stage of the world football tournament (the host of the championship is Brazil and 31 teams that reached the final following the results of the qualifying round). The Brazilian national team will open the championship on June 12 in the city of São Paulo. All 8 teams, which had previously managed to win the title of world champion in football, made it to the final tournament, while the national team from Bosnia and Herzegovina made it to the final stage for the first time. Qualifying rounds for the 2014 World Cup started on June 15, 2011 and ended on November 20, 2013.
Regulations
All participants of the world tournament were divided into 8 groups of 4 teams in each of them. The distribution of teams into groups was based on the draw.
Group A: Cameroon, Brazil, Mexico, Croatia
Group B: Netherlands, Spain, Australia, Chile.
Group C: Greece, Colombia, Japan, Cote d'Ivoire.
Group D: England, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Italy
Group E: Ecuador, Switzerland, Honduras, France
Group F: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Argentina, Nigeria, Iran.
Group G: Portugal, Germany, USA, Ghana
Group H: Russia, Algeria, Belgium, Republic of Korea
The teams that took 1st and 2nd place in each group will advance to the 1/8 finals of the championship. The position of the national teams in the standings will be determined by the following indicators:
- the number of points scored in the group in all matches of the group stage;
- the difference between goals scored and goals conceded;
- the total number of goals scored.
If, in all three indicators, two or more teams score an equal number of points, then the result of the game between these teams will be taken into account.
In the 1/8 finals, the 1st place winners in the group will play against the 2nd place teams. The losing team is eliminated from the World Championship.
