The players
Star man
Barcelona's Alexis Sánchez is Chile's main threat, as England discovered to their cost in last autumn's friendly at Wembley. Stocky, powerful and elusive in his movement off the ball, he illuminated the World Cup in South Africa and can do so again in Brazil, presumably relieved to be out of Lionel Messi's shadow.
One for the Premier League
Marcelo Díaz has impressed for Basel against English opposition and was once dubbed the "South American Xavi" given his passing ability. Any comparisons with Xavi tend to leave Premier League scouts in a lather.
The bad boy
Considering his reputation before arriving in Cardiff, Gary Medel's first year in the English game proved pretty tame. The Pitbull has been arrested for drink driving, for shoving a female journalist and for allegedly making death threats outside a supermarket. He has been tasered by the police, and once admitted that, if he had not made it as a footballer, he would be selling drugs. "I am a nice kind of crazy," he has said. "And the thing about the drugs was a joke."
The weakest link
The height of that back-line, where the diminutive Medel is often stationed as a centre-half and neither José Rojas nor Gonzalo Jara are close to 6ft. Marcos González at 6ft 3in is their tallest defender but he has been without a club since March and left to train on his own at the national centre in Santiago.
The coach
Jorge Sampaoli took Universidad to three consecutive league titles and the Copa Sudamericana, as well as the semi-final of the Copa Libertadores, and Chile to the finals after finishing third in South American qualifying. The hyperactive, technical area jumping jack is a Marcelo Bielsa clone who looks like Andre Agassi.
Tactics
This is Sampaoli's side but they bear all the hallmarks of a Bielsa team. Chile are all about high-tempo attacking football, pressing opponents high up the pitch and using width to stretch the play. They can interchange from 3-4-1-2 to 3-3-1-3 to 4-3-3, depending on how opponents are set up, their mobile forwards scurrying about with abandon.
Grudge match
In the absence of Peru, they have been attempting to stoke rivalries with – wait for it – Australia, Spain and, conveniently enough, Holland. It's actually the brainchild of Cristal, a Chilean beer company, whose horror movie-inspired adverts feature Dutch blondes, Madridistas and Aussie surf dudes being terrorised by mysterious shadowy figures who deposit Chile replica kits on their doorsteps. Apparently it's a selling point. No idea what the beer tastes like. Otherwise you're going back to the Battle of Santiago with Italy in 1962.
Holed up
Chile stayed and trained at Toca da Raposa II, Cruzeiro's base in Belo Horizonte, when they played a friendly against Brazil in the city last year, and they liked it so much they're coming back. First, though, they have demanded new beds and large flat-screen televisions in every room. They have plenty of time to sing along to Chile's World Cup song, Vamos Chile, written by one Miguel Piñera, famed in Chile for writing bouncy pop songs, dating models and being the brother of the former president Sebastián Piñera. Maradona lookalike Piñera has a way with words: "Come on Chile, come on Chile, we are going to the World Cup. With caipirinha and piscola we are going to celebrate."