12th June, 2014
For the next four weeks, football lovers will savour the exploits of the best players of the game across the globe as the World Cup kicks off in Brazil tonight.
The opening game is between host Brazil and Croatia at the Arena Corinthians Stadium in Sao Paolo. The two countries are in Group A. The other countries in this group are Mexico and Cameroon.
Thirty-two countries will be fighting for the coveted trophy now in the custody of Spain which won it in 2010 when South Africa hosted the tournament.
Nigeria’s Super Eagles will start their campaign for the trophy on 16 June against Iran. Both countries are in Group F along with South American giants, Argentina and Bosnia-Hercegovina.
Nigeria’s next match will be against Bosnia-Hercegovina on 21 June and the last group game will be against Argentina on 25 June.
The Super Eagles are expected to improve on the last 16 spot they attained in 1994 and 1998.
Meanwhile, authorities in Nigeria’s north-eastern state of Adamawa have ordered all venues planning to screen live coverage of the football World Cup to close.
They say they have received intelligence of planned bomb attacks during the competition.
Adamawa is one of the states badly affected by Islamist violence.
Open-air viewing centres – where people pay to watch live football – are popular throughout Nigeria.
“Our action is not to stop Nigerians… watching the World Cup. It is to protect their lives,” Brig-Gen Nicholas Rogers was quoted by the AFP agency as saying on Wednesday in Yola, the capital of Adamawa.
The state has often been targeted by Boko Haram Islamist militants.
A state of emergency was declared in the north-east a year ago but Boko Haram still remain strong
On 1 June at least 14 people were killed in a bomb attack on a bar that was screening a televised football match in Adamawa. No group claimed responsibility for the blast, but Boko Haram were the main suspects.
The state is one of three in Nigeria that have been placed under emergency rule because of the Boko Haram insurgency. The other states are Borno and Yobe.
Nigerian troops are struggling to contain the insurgency in the north-east
Many people were also killed in two explosions blamed on Boko Haram while watching football in a video hall in the north-eastern town of Maiduguri in March.
Correspondents say many fans have no means other than the viewing centres to watch the Nigerian team – or Super Eagles – in action. The team is tipped by pundits to be one of Africa’s star performers at the World Cup.
Boko Haram has come under the international spotlight after it recently abducted more than 200 girls from a school in Chibok in Borno State. Efforts to locate the girls have so far drawn a blank.
On Thursday the British government is due to host a ministerial meeting in London about northern Nigeria’s security, following on from a summit in Paris last month in which the best ways to subdue the Boko Haram militant group were discussed.