Scissors Kick

“The most challenging aspect of building a World Cup soccer stadium in the middle of the Amazon is debatable. Some might say it is figuring out how to get oversize cranes and hundreds of tons of stainless steel and concrete into a city surrounded by a rain forest that stretches for about 2.1 million square miles. Others might mention the need to put most of those materials together before the rainy season floods the entire construction site. Then, of course, there are those who might point to the need to install the special chairs. Yes, the chairs. It may seem like a small concern — at least compared with the whole everything-being-flooded possibility — but one of the less obvious issues that comes with building a stadium in the jungle is what the searing equatorial sunlight here can do to plastic.” NY Times

More than a game in Brazil
“I spent August in London, which means that returning to my adopted city of Rio de Janeiro there is a ritual which I always have to go through – catching the 472 bus to Sao Januario, the stadium of Vasco da Gama. It is the best way I know of ensuring that, in mind as well as in body, I have put London in the past and am focused on events over here.” The World Game – Tim Vickery