Runup to tournament has been fraught – thanks to delays, cost over-runs and protests – but glory on pitch beckons once again
Brazil, host of next year's football World Cup, has been plagued by stadium delays, mass protests and cost over-runs in the runup to Friday's draw.
But that is all changing now the real business of football is in sight, and confidence is Brazil's new order of the day.
The upbeat mood in the country now is in sharp contrast to the grim mood on the streets six months ago.
Brazil were drawn in a group they should have little difficulty in qualifying from and national team coach Luiz Felipe Scolari expressed quiet satisfaction that his team's first opponents will be Croatia.
Pelé – Brazil's favourite son and the world's most famous footballer – shared the optimism, predicting victory in the final at the Maracanã.
The host nation have won the world cup a record five times – in 1958, 1962, 1970, 1994 and 2002.
They will also play Cameroon, who failed to qualify for the last Africa Cup of Nations, and Mexico, who have slumped somewhat since their largely youth team beat Brazil in the football final at the London Olympics last year.
The opening match of the tournament will take place on 12 June, presuming the Itaquera stadium in São Paulo – site of a recent crane collapse – is finished by then.
Scolari said he was pleased at the draw. "It's always best to have an opening game against a European team because they need some time to adapt to Brazil," he said.
"I think we'll get better as we go along. This first game will be between two balanced teams, but we live here, we play here, so for us it is better."
Aldo Rebelo, Brazil's sports minister, said he was also confident the national team were strong enough to progress.
"It's a balanced group, with difficult games. But if the team play as they usually do, Brazil will move to the round of 16 of the tournament," he told the Guardian. "Brazil will get to the final for sure."
The World Cup draw took place in the city of Salvador in northeast Brazil.
For most of the footballing dignitaries at the event, it appeared to be a day for talking up the home nation's chances. Brazil's Ronaldo and Zinedine Zidane of France both declared Brazil the favourites in 2014.
Pelé predicted that Brazil would banish the most traumatic moment in the country's World Cup history – defeat in the 1950 final at the Maracanã – by returning next year to lift the trophy for the sixth time.
"There's something that doesn't leave my memory – my dad crying after the [1950] cup," he said.
"I saw my dad and his friends and they were crying and this was before TV, they were listening to the radio, and I thought, oh no, Brazil lost the World Cup. But Brazil won't cry next year, we will win."
During the draw ceremony, there were reminders of that traumatic moment in 1950. Grainy black and white footage showed Uruguay lifting the trophy.
The scorer of the winning goal, Alcides Ghiggia – now 86 – joined Geoff Hurst, Zidane and others in drawing the balls.
Mostly, however, the ceremony was designed to reinforce images the hosts would like to project through the tournament.
Videos and live performances highlighted the country's extraordinary natural beauty (with images from the Amazon in the north to the Iguaçu waterfalls in the south), its culture (songs by rapper Emicida and samba singer Alcione) and phenomenal success in the World Cup.
Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff said the tournament will have a special significance in what she called the home of football.
"This will be the Cup of Cups, an event that no one will forget," she said. "We have a history of success in football. This is the land of Pelé, the greatest player of all time.
"This the land of Ronaldo, the biggest scorer in World Cup histories. We are full of football geniuses."
Ronaldo cut a corpulent figure as he appeared on stage as a member of the local organising committee. He said it was far tougher to organise the World Cup than to win it.
Unsurprisingly, there was no appearance by Romario, another of Brazil's former World Cup winning strikers who is now better known as a politician who is fiercely critical of what he sees as wasteful public spending on the tournament.
In his first tweet after the ceremony, Romario wrote: "The stadiums are collapsing and yet people are thinking that the 'Brazilian way' will resolve everything. Need I say more."
Despite the confidence of the organisers, this sentiment is widely shared in Brazil, where many feel the billions spent on new stadiums could have been better used to improve dire public services.
This was a major reason for the mass protests earlier this year, which overshadowed the Confederations Cup. A repeat of those demonstrations is a major concern for Fifa, world football's governing body.
Cutting short a moment of silence for Nelson Mandela to quote some of the South African statesman's words, Fifa president Sepp Blatter made a thinly veiled appeal for Brazilians to put the protests behind them.
"I appeal to the population of Brazil, the 200 million people, through this World Cup please come together," he said.
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