World Cup 2014 countdown – live!

That's it from today's live blog. Normal service will resume at 6am (BST) tomorrow, which is a mere 15 hours before the first match of the tournament: Brazil v Croatia, for which I'll be providing minute-by-minute commentary here on the Guardian website. Thanks ever so much for your time, emails, comments and contributions this afternoon - enjoy the rest of the day wherever you are.

In this video, England defender Phil Jones looks ahead to the game against Italy on Saturday and describes the squad's growing sense of excitement. He also discusses the injury he suffered while playing for Manchester United which made him fear for his World Cup chances.

The Football Supporter's Federation are running an "inconsequential poll". Yay!!! Get involved. Now!

Thanks to everyone for taking enough of an interest to post comments below the line in our daily blog. Unfortunately, I haven't had much time to monitor them too closely, but I have just seen Nottingham Forest fan Whatlarks respond to Stuart Pearces's fairly searing criticism of Jack Wilshere.

As a Forest fan, Pearce’s wittering fills me with dread. Regardless of form, Wilshere is the only England ‘central’ midfielder who’s comfortable carrying the ball. It’s international football – you can attempt to move the ball as quickly as possible, but without carriers, you’ll never commit the opposition sufficiently for space to open up for others. A midfield two consisting of Gerrard and Henderson (or heaven-forbid, Lampard), will just leave England unable to keep the ball, as ever.

Why the hell do I still care FFS?!

WhatLarks11 June 2014 4:19pm

Anything Dominic Fifield can do, Owen Gibson can do better. Our sports news correspondent has gone all Spielberg and sent this video dispatch from Brazil, in which irritated FA chairman Greg Dyke responds to Sepp Blatter's criticism of the British media for being "racist".

FA parish notice: The Football Association has announced that England will not be training in Manaus after travelling the 2,000 miles there from Rio tomorrow.

News from the Cameroon camp. England aren't the only team who began training with only 21 of their 23 squad members this morning in Brazil. Cameroon also began training two men down, but not because of injuries. My spies in their camp tell me that the team bus accidentally left the hotel without Cédric Djeugoue and Fabrice Olinga, who may have overslept.

View image in fullscreen

The former Football Association chairman Lord Triesman has claimed that Fifa acts like a “mafia family” just a day before the start of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. He also described the broadside Sepp Blatter launched against the "racist" British media as "grotesque". Read all about it by clicking on this link.

Protests in Manaus. There is massive worker protest currently taking place outside the stadium in which England will take on Italy on Saturday. They're blocking the roads and demanding that the local mayor come and talk to him about their grievances.

Dominic Fifield has just emailed me from England training to say that Stuart Pearce has offered a fairly brutal assessment of Jack Wilshere's prospects of featuring at this World Cup.

I think there are five players that will not kick a ball at the World Cup," he said on Talksport. "Forster and Foster are the obvious ones and I think Shaw, Smalling and Wilshere will be the others. I think he [Wilshere] is very, very short of form. Watching the last game [against Honduras] I didn't see a Wilshere that sprung on the scene many months ago. I just think he is very, very short of confidence and I see Lampard, Lallana or Barkley ahead of him now. I just feel his lack of form really [will cost him] and that will be on Roy's mind. He had a very disappointing last game and he has not shown me the fully fit Wilshere we saw when he came on the scene.

The Guardian's Dominic Fifield reckons he might have spotted some Italian spies monitoring England training. It's probably safe to say that Guardian photographer Tom Jenkins won't be having any sleepless nights.

The media have now been ordered to pack up and leave England's training session so the serious business of the day can begin. Just to recap, neither Danny Welbeck nor Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain are particpating in the session.

Sky Sports News are showing footage of England's training session, which is open to the press for 15 minutes. The early stages would suggest the players are working on keepie-uppies and removing bottles of Powerade from a cooler and swigging heartily. Phil Jones and just rolled an inch-perfect pass two feet to Wayne Rooney. As something of a confidence player, he'll be pleased with that.

England's training suggestion is under way. My spies tell me that neither Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain nor Danny Welbeck are participating in the session.

Owen Gibson, one of very few journalists in Brazil who hasn't spent the morning taking photographs of the view outside their hotel rooms, has written up the best bits from Sepp Blatter's address to the Fifa conference. You can share his ennui by clicking on this link.

Preston North End and former England striker Kevin Davies has World Cup fever. He's dealing with it in his own inimitable no-nonsense way, by power-hosing his patio into cleanliness and submission. I'll wager those paving slabs are terrified.

Thanks to Haz, who's very kindly emailed in to bring this excellent Beautiful Game of Thrones animation to my attention. If you like football and are a fan of Game of Thrones, you're bound to get a kick out of it. Wayne Rooney as Hodor certainly made me laugh.

Reader BrasilBranche is in upbeat mood in the comments section below. He seems to be immune to World Cup fever.

One day to go... just one... and it seems that nothing is ready, hardly anything at all. We were all expecting one of the best tournaments in the history of the game, but it seems like we won't get that.

There will be riots in the streets, protests nationwide and possibly worldwide.

Nao Vai Ter Copa de Cerveja!

Porque nao?

BrasilBranche11 June 2014 2:49pm

Hats off to the good people in our multimedia department, who have stopped laughing for long enough to successfully upload this video of Sepp Blatter busting moves at the Fifa conference.

The Guardian's Dominic Fifield is on his way to England training, but is so dedicated to his craft that he still has time to make the big calls about his bread-and-butter day job.

In the very unlikely event that anybody at Fifa is ever vain enough to waste millions of pounds commissioning a movie about the organisation's history, I suppose the trailer might like something like this. There was a time when I thought English actor Tim Roth was the coolest man alive. Not anymore, I tells you.

A lot of people think the life of a globe-trotting sports journalist is impossibly glamourous and up to a point they're right - travelling the world watching the best of the best compete against each other free of charge is a real privilege, or so I've heard. But spare a thought for the Guardian's Owen Gibson, who is forced to spend an inordinate amount of his professional life listening to pompous and delusional sports administrators droning on and on and on and on and on and on and on. Yes, it's the life he has chosen, but I regularly pity him.

You'll probably have heard that Italy midfielder Andrea Pirlo has inked a new two-year deal with Juventus. Sky Sports News have just strafed viewers with their stat-gun, revealing that the bearded genius has won the ball 11,551 times in the 11,344 minutes he's played for the Seire A side. That's a lot of ball-winning. Spare a thought for the poor sod who had to research that particular gem.

England's Daniel Sturridge has got World Cup fever ...

The Guardian's David Conn tweets ...

England are scheduled to train in an hour or two. It's their last session before making the 2,000 trip to Manaus, where their first match against Italy will be played on Saturday. The first 15 minutes of their session is open and all eyes are likely to be on Danny Welbeck, in a bid to judge the extent of the injury that is threatening to keep him out of the starting line-up.

Uh-oh. Say what you like about Sepp Blatter, but he's nothing if not ambitious. He's been holding court in Sao Paulo already this morning, suggesting that the World Cup could soon become little more than a qualifier for an inter-galactic football tournament.

The Guardian US interactive team have been busy. They've come up with this splendid thingummy-bob to help us all learn whether or not having the golden boot winner in your team is conducive to winning the World Cup.

Sick of Brazil 2014 already? Want to wallow in nostalgia by reading a 4,800 word A-Z on Mexico 86 by our 1980s expert Steven Pye instead? Of course you do.

Guardian sports news reporter Owen Gibson has tweeted a photograph of the digs the bosses are putting him up in for the duration of the tournament. Joking apart, it's a side of Brazil Sepp Blatter and his chums won't appreciate being publicised in the coming weeks.

World Cup of hate. "This is an interesting poll by the NY Times," writes Declan Johnston. " It would seem there's a lot of self-loathing and extraordinary bombastic self-confidence in America, as they are both backing their team to win and willing it to lose. There's also a lot of politics at work, with many wanting either Iran or USA to do badly, but can anyone explain what German people appear to have against Honduras"

I'm jiggered if I know, Declan. This 2013 article on diplomatic relations between the two countries doesn't shed any light on the subject. Anyone?

Thanks to Tom Britten for sending in the accompanying vine of the late Sir Bobby RObson suffering an extreme dose of World Cup fever. If that doesn't put a smile on your face and a spring in your step, I'm not sure what will.

In other Guardian contributor news, Jonathan Wilson trudged through the rain in Sao Paulo to get his accreditation for tomorrow night's opener between Brazil and Croatia. He got hopelessly lost while trying to follow some arrows that were pointing in the wrong direction, then met a slightly vampiric and bedraggled Chris Waddle. Read all about it here.

Guardian tactics guru Michael Cox has been ridiculously busy. As well as writing a fine feature on the formations and innovations we can look forward to seeing at the World Cup in today's Guardian, he's been posting his team-by-team tactical guides on his excellent website Zonal Marking. If you want to spend long evenings in the pub pontificating knowledgeably about how Belgium might not be able to succeed without proper full-backs, it's the only show in town.

Some sad news from Brazil. Luiz Felipe Scolari took his team's training session yesterday, less than 30 minutes after learning that his nephew had been killed in a car crash. Tarcisio Joao Schneider, 48 and the son of one of Scolari's sisters, was killed when the car he was driving in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, collided head-on with a truck on the opposite lane.

Scolari took charge of Brazil’s training session yesterday, where some players hugged him and talked to him briefly, including the midfielder Oscar, defender David Luiz and striker Fred.

The Brazilian federation said in a statement that Scolari was told about Schneider’s death less than 20 minutes before the session. It said the coach was “devastated” by the news “but he had a duty and he acted with the professionalism already expected from him”.

View image in fullscreen

Good afternoon, everybody. Barry Glendenning here to take you through the afternoon with all the news that's fit to print (and much that almost certainly won't be) from assorted boys and girls throughout Brazil, who are probably enjoying a leisurely breakfast, having woken from their penultimate sleep before the World Cup begins tomorrow. I don't know about you, but I am beside myself with excitement and cannot wait!

In the meantime, this dinky Brazilian footballer name generator reveals that, but for the misfortune of geography and the complete lack of any kind of physical co-ordination, I'd be known as "Glendenncos" if I was playing for the Seleção.

Right, that's it from me. Thanks for your company. I shall leave you in the more than capable hands of Barry Glendenning.

A brief pause for some World Cup randomness: here's a rap about Italy's Ciro Immobile:

And here's Brazil's Hulk in an ice bath in his pants.

With just one sleep to go, our writers offer their predictions for the tournament. Read, agree, disagree and post your own. As a little bonus, here's mine:

Who will reach the final? Spain and Argentina
Who will be the leading scorer? Sergio Aguero
Who is the player to watch? Jackson Martinez. Carrying Colombia's hopes with Falcao out.
How far will England go? Either group stage or quarters.
Most looking forward to All of it, basically
Least looking forward to Blatter grandstanding

If you're struggling to keep track of the sheer weight of multimedia wonderfulness bursting from these pages, then you can, and indeed should, subscribe to the GuardianFootball on YouTube. It's the one-stop for all our animated histories, brick-by-brick reconstructions and, over the coming days, our World Cup Show, not to mention stuff like this:

and this …

More audio-visual action for your delectation. But this time featuring not the words of Roy Hodgson, but the voice of James Richardson and the creative talents of Damn Fine Media.

Marca seem to do it every time. Every major tournament the Spanish newspaper comes up with a sublime way of presenting the fixture schedule in a visually arresting and brilliantly user-friendly way. This year's effort (via @garynaylor999) is no exception. It's a beauty.

Hereerrrre's Roy!

Some excellent paraphernalia being posted in our Guardian Witness assignment. A personal favourite is the Italia 90 Coca-Cola red, white and green mini-football. Did anyone born in the UK between 1975 and 1985 not have one of those?

Though Blatter stopped shy of floating terms such as lynching, his sense of himself as some nebulous kind of civil rights leader appears stronger by the day. “I still have fire inside me,” he intoned, repeatedly stressing that when united (behind him, obviously), Fifa is “so strong”. Stirring stuff. In fact, I can only dream that in the forthcoming movie about itself, which Fifa has bankrolled to the tune of £16m, the closing titles feature a slow-motion montage of the real-life Sepp going about his good works, set to Labi Siffre’s (Something Inside) So Strong.

Marina Hyde's column today is on Uncle Sepp's long walk to freedom.

And news coming in from São Paulo airport …

My colleague David Hills emails to point out that Uncle Sepp has previous in the dodgy dancing department …

Some very impressive scores (which I'm going to assume are not Google-assisted) coming in on our ultimate trivia quiz (current average score: 14) …

Prompted by our earlier mention of Victor Asparagus, George Ferzoco emails in with another World Cup XI dominated by one club: "Hi John — having just digested the asparagus, I hasten to note that on 6 June 1978, in Mar de Plata, Italy defeated Hungary, and in so doing played with nine from Juventus: Zoff, Gentile, Cabrini, Benetti, Scirea, Causio, Tardelli, Bettega and Cuccureddu."

Indeed they did, although Antonello Cuccureddu was a 75th-minute substitute for Antonio Cabrini and nine minutes later Roberto Bettega was replaced by Torino's Francesco Graziani. So strictly speaking only eight Juve players were on the pitch at any point, and then for only nine minutes. But still, those nine minutes put that Italy/Juve side on a par with the Soviet Union/Dynamo Kiev against Hungary in 1986 and Asparagus's Uruguay/Nacional against Italy in 1970.

Chapter three of our funky interactive history of the Seleção is now published and ready for consumption. Here's the full piece. And here's today's video instalment:

Here's the full story on the Manaus pitch. "The 46,000-seater stadium in Manaus was built for the World Cup but the pitch has been undergoing emergency repairs in recent months due to seriously undernourished grass following the excessive use of fertiliser on the new playing surface."

Scott Murray? On the Cruyff Turn? You know you're going to want to read this.

It’s the defining image of the 1974 World Cup; the defining image of the great Dutch team of the 70s; the defining image of one of the most talented, enchanting and magical players to ever breeze around a football field.

An assignment from Guardian Witness: World Cup memories and memorabilia – share your stickers, shirts and snaps

World Cups are about much more than football, so show us your stickers, shirts and snapshots from previous tournamentsand we will build a gallery of your memories and paraphernalia

One of my earliest World Cup memories, in fact one of my earliest memories full stop, is the little model of Pique, the sombrero-wearing mascot-vegetable from Mexico 1986, that sat on our telly throughout the tournament. If memory serves, it came from a Kinder Egg (creating unrealistic chocolate-egg-based expectations that have lasted into adult life). I failed to keep it, and had no smartphone with which to take a picture, but you can share your memorabilia here.

Pre-tournament pitch drama seems to be a World Cup tradition these days, but that surface does look seriously ropey (by the way, you can see the detail in the top picture a little better by using our Beta site).

Some worrying photos have emerged of the pitch in Manaus that will host England and Italy on Saturday. Here's one, with the goal area looking extremely rough:

View image in fullscreen

And here's another, taken from a different angle, that suggests the bulk of the pitch isn't too bad. Hardly looks like a carpet, though:

View image in fullscreen

OK quiz fans, this is something a bit special (even if I do say so myself). Like pass completion rates? Shot save percentages? Stats, stats, stats? Well you won't find any of them here – this is all about trivia, the odd facts and stories that for some reason lodge themselves in your brain and remain there for years (taking up valuable space required for far more important things, like which side of the car the petrol cap is on. And birthdays). So push your random knowledge of the World Cup to its limits with our fiendish 30-question quiz epic. (Warning: features dodgy picture doctoring of an Adidas Tango …)

A riff from BTL:

Morning pop fans. Who's up for a bit of BTL The Knowledge?

I was thinking that the Italian forward Ciro Immobiles name is a little unfortunate for a striker. Can anyone think of any other footballers with a name ill fitting for their position? The only other one I can think of is the French goalkeeper in 1978, Dominique Dropsy

Sionnaich11 June 2014 9:23am

I've always been a big fan of Uruguay's Victor Espárrago, but that's because his name translates to Victor Asparagus. Also he played in one of only two World Cup sides to ever field eight players from the same club.

Something a little off-the-wall (see what I did there?) from the Wall Street Journal to have a play around with in a spare moment: the World Cup of Everything Else. And, speaking of interactive graphical loveliness, our Zico Strategy feature put together by the US interactive team remains a thing of beauty.

Uruguay's had their first training session at their camp in Belo Horizonte on Tuesday evening and, as the picture below shows, Luis Suárez was able to take at least some part. ""He's responding very well and his spirits couldn't be better. He's working full out on his physical fitness," said La Celeste coach Óscar Tabárez. "As we have no set deadlines, I don't know if we'll have him for the first match, for the second, for the third. If it were up to me, Suárez would play tomorrow."

View image in fullscreen

Fifa's Congress, during which the Qatar World Cup corruption allegations will du discussed, was opened in Sao Paulo last night with the usual suited-and-booted opening ceremony. The highlight/lowlight (depending on your point of view) was almost certainly this:

And in other contractual news, Manchester United target Thomas Müller has put pen to paper on a new deal at Bayern Munich. He won the Golden Boot in South Africa in 2010, which is one of those odd facts that you occasionally forget and then get surprised about all over again when you remember.

Speaking of Pirlo, Juventus have confirmed he has signed a new two-year contract at the club. "The fantastic story of Andrea Pirlo at Juventus continues!" cheered Juve in a statement.

Morning all. Or good afternoon/good evening depending on which part of the world you find yourself in. First up, a quick summary of the overnight and late-breaking news that you might have missed:

Portugal hammered the Republic of Ireland 5-1 in a friendly at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, with Hugo Almeida scoring twice. Cristiano Ronaldo got a 66 minute run-out.

Roy Hodgson was in fine form of the topic of Andrea Pirlo and why he didn't get much of a look-in when Hodgson was at Inter. " “I felt a bit sorry for him because the squad was full of No10s. And, back then, he was a No10. Apart from [Roberto] Baggio, there was [Youri] Djorkaeff and Zé Elias, and a couple of others all vying with Paulo Sousa for the same position. So he didn’t play that much but he was very good in training and Carlo Ancelotti showed a stroke of genius with regards to Pirlo’s career."

FA chairman Greg Dyke was tight-lipped over Hodgson’s England future post-Brazil.

Dyke, a busy man yesterday, also called on Sepp Blatter to stand down as president of Fifa (Fifa's biannual Congress continues today).