Welcome to a new World Cup year…..

I hope everyone had a restful Christmas and are looking forward to everything that 2014 has to offer…. 

Back in December 2013, the World Cup draw took place and the final 32 team and their groups have been determined. Some interesting pairings have come to light in the first round of the competition, such as Spain v Holland, England v Italy & Germany v Portugal.

 

Of the teams we will be following next year, I think the USA will have the toughest start in Group G, along with Germany, Ghana & Portugal. All the matches in the ‘Group or Death’, are going to be interesting, and I have no idea which of the 4 teams will make it out of that group, and USA will be doing very well if they can be in the top 2 of that group. England have fared a bit better with their slot in Group D, along with Italy, Uruguay & Costa Rica, and if they can scrape a win & 2 draws, that would probably be enough to progress. Finally, with no New Zealand this time around, Australia will one of the teams I will be rooting for next year. The Australians will also have their work cut out, sharing group B with Spain, Holland & Chile, and will really need to ‘punch-above-their-weight’ to make it through to the Group of 16 round. 

Now that the draw has been made we know which teams will meet in the initial group stages of the tournament. Yates & I have ordered and received some of the match tickets we are after for Brazil, and we now know who will be playing in all group stage matches we want to get tickets for:  

·         Match 1 - Sao Paulo - Brazil v Croatia

·         Match 7 - Fortaleza - Uruguay v Costa Rica

·         Match 17  - Fortaleza - Brazil v Mexico

·         Match 29 - Fortaleza - Germany v Ghana

·         Match 38 - Greece v Ivory Coast

 Note

-          We already have tickets for the matches highlighted in  BOLD

-          There are 3 matches in the later stages which we are trying to get tickets for as well

It’s always a heap of fun trying to get tickets for World cup matches, especially now that the draw has been made, it makes getting tickets for games with Brazil in almost impossible to get… Them is the breaks…! We are well into the 3^rd Sales phase right now, which is another ballot process, and we will not find out the results until early in February. The 4^th ticketing phase starts on the 26^th February and the tickets for that are sold on a “first-come-first-served” basis, so Yates & I will need to be at our computers with Credit cards in hand as soon as that phase starts. There is a 5^th phase in April, and after that it is pretty much only ticket returns.

I will update everyone on our progress with tickets over the coming couple of months, check back to see what we get… 

The great thing about it being 2014 at last is that it is starting to feel like the big trip is finally getting closer. It’s now less than 147 days until the tournament kicks off, and only 135 days until Fiona & I get on a plane bound for South America…. It can’t come quick enough…