Arena Amazonia

Deep in the Amazon rain forest is situated on of the host cities to the Brazil 2014 Soccer World Cup, Manaus. Here you will find the Arena Amazonia, which is the refurbished Vivaldao. It's brilliant and unique design will rival that of Durban's Moses Mabida Stadium.

The capacity of the stadium will be 42377, relatively small compared to the 2010 stadia, but is said to be remarkable tourist attraction as well due to its location near the rivers Negro and Solimoes. These rivers have each have a different colour, one is dark and the other is brown or muddy, they run side by side without mixing and will be definitely be worth seeing.

The Arena Amazonia will have restaurants and other social attractions, as well as it's very own monorail. The population of Manaus is just over 2 million, so this will be an exciting time for them and I'm sure the locals will be great hosts to the thousands of tourists that they will receive during the 2014 World Cup.

Here we have the Arena Amazonia under construction.



‏‏@fernandomelojr

FIFA World Cup 2014 Mascot

I remember when Zakumi, the mascot for the FIFA 2010 World Cup was announced, it started such a hype and got people so much more involved in the World Cup celebrations.

Zakumi was a yellow leopard with green hair. His name was created by combining "ZA" which is the code for South Africa and "Kumi" which means 10 in alot of the South African languages.

Just recently Brazil announced that they will be using an Armadillo as their mascot for the 2014 FIFA World Cup. This particular type of armadillo is an endangered species to Brazil.

The armadillo has been named as Fuleco, which was decided by doing an online voting poll by the public.

FIFA 2014 Flagship Stadium

Brazils flagship Fielzao Stadium will be host to the FIFA 2014 Soccer World Cup opening ceremony. The stadium, located in Sao Paulo, will cater for 68000 seats.

There have been doubts on whether or not the stadium will be complete in time. But as a South African I can asure you that this rumor was probably started by the media themselves. We were also critisized for delays in our stadia in the 2010 FIFA World Cup, but against all that was said, we came out triumphant.

Fielzao is a brand new stadium and apart from being the host to the opening ceremony it will also serve as home grounds to the Corinthians sports club.

In this picture we see the progess that has been made on the stadium thus far. It does seem that there is still a lot to do, but I believe that it will be ready before the deadline. Thanks to @Gabrieltvr on Twitter for the pic ;)
 

Brazil 2014

Brazil was named host to the 2014 Soccer World Cup, and on this blog I will be tracking the build up to the 2014 event. I will be covering the Stadiums, people, and teams as we get closer to the event.

Brazil will host the world cup at 12 stadia across 12 cities throughout Brazil. In future posts I will be covering each stadium in detail. So look out for it.