Ready or Not, Here Comes the World Cup

The World Cup kicks off in less than one month. Four years of preparation, construction and planning comes to a head when the first games of the Group Phase kick off in every major city across a country roughly the size of the Continental United States without a single road connecting the beaches of Rio to the Amazon. The very notion of hosting the biggest sporting event in the world for a burgeoning country searching to expand its infrastructure is daunting to say the least.

In the time since the World Cup was awarded to Brazil, preparations have been proceeding at breakneck pace. Of the twelve stadiums to host games for the tournament, three are still unfinished. The recent deaths of two workers at Stadium Corinthians have brought the total to nine construction-related deaths and a new wave of protests. Neighborhoods in every host city have been displaced wholesale in an effort to make room for incoming tourists and yet teams at every location are finding difficulty in coordinating practice space and suitable living quarters. Not to mention lingering questions of how teams are going to efficiently travel from distant Arena Amazonia in western Amazonas to Maracan