20th FIFA World Cup, 2014

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Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) is an international football competition contested by the men’s national football teams. The championship has been awarded every four years since the inaugural tournament in 1930, except in 1942 and 1946 when it was not held because of the Second World War. Spain holds the current championship winning the tournament in 2010 in South Africa.

Since 1930, eight nations has won the word cup in total of 19 tournaments. Brazil have won five times, and they are the only team to have played in every tournament. The other World Cup winners are Italy, with four titles; West Germany with three titles; Argentina and inaugural winners Uruguay, with two titles each; and England France and Spain, with one title each.The World Cup is the most widely viewed and followed sporting event in the world, exceeding even the Olympic Games the cumulative audience of all matches of the 2006 FIFA World Cup was estimated to be 26.29 billion with an estimated 715.1 million people watching the final match a ninth of the entire population of the planet.

Brazil, are many people’s favorites to lift the cup and being the fact that they are the hosting country for this year’s World Cup the pressure on the Brazilian side is arguably the greatest. Although Brazil was the most successful team to win five championship, other teams from South America and Europe are also in with a chance to win it all.

Some of the favorite players are the Brazilian footballer Neymar, Argentina’s star player Lionel Messi, and Uruguay players like Edinson Cavani, Diego Forlan and Luis Suarez, are seen as potential contenders.

Although Americans are probably not the biggest fans for football (soccer), this year’s World Cup Championship matching games brought a lot of television audiences. As an example “Sunday night’s face of between the U.S, and Portugal drew 18.2 million people on ESPN, the network said, more than the total audience for all but one of the World Series games on Fox last year and more watched than any of the NBA Finals games on ABC this year,” according to Nielsen.

Despite some controversy in the country about spending tons of money for World Cup preparations, FIFA 2014 World Cup is still widely celebrated in Brazil.  Many other European countries also get in the excitement of this tournament. Local sports bars, restaurants and other places who show the games on huge TVs get fully packed during the matches. Some bet on the games, some watch it for their country team and some just watch it for the excitement. Whether your country made it or not to this year’s World Cup tournament, for those who like soccer, I hope that you enjoy all the matches and I will say “May the best team win!”.