Leon Wobschall: Samba football set to captivate world once more next summer

The 20th FIFA World Cup, the first to be held in South America since Argentina ran the show back in 1978, returns to the continent which truly has football in its soul, continually nourishing impoverished children from the Favelas of Rio to those in the Villa Miserias of Buenos Aires, providing a get-out for some in the process.

Their number famously included the one and only Diego Armando Maradona, who won a World Cup practically on his own.

The 32-day footballing feast in Brazil from June 12 to July 13, 2014 promises romance, mystery, drama and countless sub-plots all rolled into one.

I, for one, cannot wait. We’ll even have goal-line technology for the first time, so it’s a winner already.

For me, the World Cup IS South America and more especially Brazil and their neighbours from the south, Argentina.

A global competition without either of them would be like a banquet without wine.

Nothing can match the continent’s unadulterated passion for the beautiful game which while offering sheer escapism has been played out for many years against a backdrop of massive political uncertainty, sadly.

Yes, South America is a more modern and progressive entity these days than it was in the Sixties and Seventies when the junta led many of its nations with a rod of iron.

But football is still life for many millions of its folk, and it is safe to say that all of South America, indeed Latin America, will stop for just over a month next summer and don’t expect much work to be done in the offices of Rio, Montevideo, Santiago, Mexico City et al in that time.

For the greatest World Cup nation of them all in Brazil to host the party is a precious treat.

Winners a record five times and no one can get near them for style and swagger on and off the pitch.

Let’s face it, they are the second team for a multitude of football supporters around the globe weaned on iconic footage of Pele, Jairzinho, the smoking doctor Socrates, pictured – so good I heard he once got a game for Garforth Town – Zico, Careca, Josimar and Ronaldo.

Wonderful games – Brazil versus a Paolo Rossi-inspired Italy – complete with commentary from a Yorkshireman in John Helm in Barcelona in Espana 82 – and Brazil against France at Guadalajara in Mexico 86 are right up there with the greatest World Cup games. Full stop.

How good was the side of 1970 which was the last to hoist aloft the Jules Rimet trophy?

They produced football from the gods, with the only team to touch them probably being their 1982 version, who may not have lifted the prize, but enchanted millions across the world with their joie de vivre and gorgeous footballing style.

Best team never to win a World Cup? Not much of a debate, unless you are of a certain age, speak with a Dutch accent and were around in the Seventies.

The world’s fifth biggest nation, with three different time-zones, will collectively be keeping its fingers crossed as Brazil seek to win what they consider ‘their’ trophy for the first time on home soil.

For their elder generation, it will be about removing the stain of 1950 when they were stunned by Uruguay at the Maracana.

Rarely will a home nation, if ever, have had to cope with the weight of a nation’s expectation which will bear down on Brazil next year.

Two hundred million people, whipped up into a frenzy by a ceaseless media, will expect, and it will be fascinating to see how the squad cope with it.

Their neighbours Argentina successfully negotiated heavy pressure back in their own carnival in 1978, ostensibly with a little help from an overly charitable Peruvian defence among others as they progressed to the final at the expense of their biggest rivals, Brazil.

What neutral wouldn’t relish a clash between the continent’s big two in the knockout stages next year, the final even. As footballing occasions go, that sense of theatre would be unmatched.

For Europe, the question remains can one of its number win the World Cup in the Americas for the first time?

Can Germany’s golden generation end their near quarter-of-a-century wait for glory? Can Spain firmly etch their place in world football folklore? What about France, Italy and dark horses Belgium, currently doing a very passable impersonisation of that classy Denmark side of the mid-Eighties? Or Portugal, in the biggest Portuguese speaking country on the planet?

And can Africa make the big breakthrough and reach, say, a semi-final? Questions, questions.

There’s just something about a World Cup in Latin America.

Maybe it’s partly to do with the time element where we’ll have a fair few matches kicking off at 11pm BST and throughout the working day. Some would put it down to plain old nostalgia.

Who can forget England’s famous Gary Lineker-inspired 3-0 victory over Poland in Monterrey on a late night in June 1986?

I was just a slip of a lad – watching not-so-quietly tucked up in bed – as Bobby Robson’s boys got through to the knockout phases after our customary wobble, against, in this case, Morocco and Portugal, whose talents weren’t exactly of the calibre of Eusebio, Figo or Ronaldo.

That particular England group story also featured lead roles from Carlos Manuel, Bryan Robson’s poorly shoulder and Butch Wilkins.

I remember the Poland game like it was yesterday.

“Mlynarcyk’s lost it, Lineker!” All royalties should go to Barry Davies, by the way.

Let’s hope we get the chance to sweat and suffer.

And that there’s a pasty-faced hero or two in a Three Lions shirt.

If we get there.