Brazil and Croatia open the World Cup 2014 schedule with their group A match on Thursday and the game starts at 4 pm eastern time and is on the ESPN channel and streaming with a live stream from the WatchESPN website as the opening match at the of the tournament gets underway at Arena Corinthians in Sao Paulo and the world will be watching as the 32 nations play soccer tournament to see who wins the championship.

Brazil comes into the tournament they are hosting as one of the overall favorites along with Germany and Argentina as well as defending champion Spain and they have a very exciting team for this tournament. The team won the 2013 Confederations Cup trophy and that was a very big win for the nation as they prepared for the Cup and now they have the chance to open things up with a win against Croatia and that would make advancing out of Group A much easier. The team has Mexico and Cameroon as the other teams in the group and while it is not an easy group by any stretch, it should be no trouble for Brazil to get out of it.

Brazil last won the Cup back in 2002 and they come in now with Neymar as one of their best players and they have a bunhc of one name stars and others that should help along, including Dani Alves, Hulk, David Luiz and Ramires as well as Oscar and Willian and their team is coming in strong and ready to win. Luiz Felipe Scolari has been preparing his team for this moment for years and now they will be on the stage against Croatia and it comes from the Arena Corinthians in Sao Paulo and that comes before the second group matchup with Mexico at Fortaleza and then against Cameroon in Brasilia.

The team has a number of players to watch apart from Neymar, including Thiago Silva and he is one of the best defensive players in the world and he will have plenty of attention on him. Neymar plays for Barcelona with Lionel Messi and he will be one of the key members of the Brazil squad along with Oscar, who played with Chelsea and this is the 19th appearance for the team in the World Cup.

The first day has Brazil playing Croatia and then on Friday Cameroon and Mexico play to finish off Group A. The Group B matchups start with Spain and the Netherlands and that comes from Salvador on ESPN, while Chile and Australia play the late match at 6 pm ET that day.

Check here for the Group A schedule and coverage for the Brazil World Cup from ESPN on TV and streaming online.