The World Cup 2014 tournament starts in Brazil on Thursday and the 32 team soccer tournament is the most important football competition on the globe and the first matchup has the host nation taking on Croatia to kick off the group stage and on Friday teams like Spain, the Netherlands, Mexico, Australia and Chile will be in action before Saturday has England, Uruguay, Italy and Japan on the fixture schedule on the bracket and a printable PDF is available below for the ESPN coverage.
The tournament opens with Brazil and Croatia playing each other on Thursday and the Friday matches have some good games as well, with Group A finishing with Mexico and Cameroon and that will lead into the Group B matchups. The Friday schedule also has Chile and Australia playing against each other along with Spain and the Netherlands. Spain comes in as the defending champions and they also are one of the favorites along with Germany and Argentina.
The Saturday schedule has group c and group D playing and one of the most anticipated matchups of the entire tournament comes that day, as England takes on Italy. That match is a classic rematch of an old game and the two sides are looking to start off the Cup strong. England is not usually a great performer in recent Cups and they want to get that right and players like Wayne Rooney and Daniel Sturridge will need to step up. That will also be the first game at the horribly planned Amazon stadium and that makes it tough as well.
Uruguay is going to be an interesting team to watch and they open with Costa Rica, while Japan and the Ivory Coast matchup after Colombia and Greece start off the day at 12 pm noon. Sunday has the Swiss playing Ecuador and France against Honduras, while Argentina and Bosnia-Herzegovina play the late match. Lionel Messi will be key for Argentina and that team could make some noise and that game comes from Rio de Janeiro.
The Monday matchups start for Group G and that is the group of death and that is one of the draws to watch in the tournament. The United States matches up with Ghana to start the Cup and they also play against Portugal and Germany. The group is tough with Ghana, who knocked out the US at the past two World Cups, while Cristiano Ronaldo is one of the best players in the world. Germany is coming in with some injuries, but they are one of the favorites and have a very deep team.
The Us plays against Ghana first before matching up in the Amazon with Portugal and then the team plays Germany. The first match for Germany is against Portugal in Salvador and that game will be on ESPN, while USA plays in Natal and that will be on ESPN at 6 pm.
Check here for the World Cup schedule and match list for the 2014 tournament and a printable bracket and schedule for the tournament.