For Groups, Teams, Scores and other information about the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, there's no better one stop source than FIFA itself.

When the greatly anticipated 20th FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) Men's World Cup Tournament kicked off in Brazil on June 12, 2014, it's hard to believe that there was ever a point in time when the very life of this oh-so-watched worldwide sporting event hung in the balance. But after World War II, that's exactly how things stood. Then, no country clamoring to host the first World Cup since 1938 and the first in twelve years. For all intents and purposes, soccer was in limbo.

Finally, in 1946, Brazil stepped forward and agreed to host the 1950 World Cup. It may have saved the World Cup as we know it today as well as organized soccer itself.
64 Years later, the World Cup Tournament returned to Brazil, opening with a match between Brazil and Croatia on June 12, 2014.

Originally, soccer—football as it's now known everywhere else except the U.S. and Canada—was a 19th century blue collar British pastime. It wasn't until the 1908 Olympic Games that it was officially acknowledged as a sport.

While the British may have invented the game, Brazil has become its spiritual home.

To say the least, Brazilians are fanatical about football (in Portuguese futebol, pronounced foo-chee-bol). So fanatical that it almost approaches the status of "religion." For example, imagine taking all the fans in the United States who avidly follow (American) football, baseball, basketball, soccer, ice hockey and  every other sport and combining their passions and devotion  into a single sport. Only then can you begin to understand what futebol really means to Brazilians.

One North American traveler in Brazil reports having watched a group of boys playing futebol in the dry, northeast part of the country. They were playing barefooted, on a dusty dirt road, with strategically placed rocks as goals, using a ball handmade from coconut husks covered with natural latex tapped from a nearby rubber tree. Needless to say, the ball wasn't exactly round. He was astonished at how good they were and says, "No wonder Brazil has won five World Cups. If those kids play so well there, under those conditions, imagine what they can do with shoes and a ball that's actually round!"

For Groups, Teams, Scores and other information about the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, there's no better source than FIFA itself.