It begins on June 12, and here’s one of the best pre-tournament roundups I’ve seen. That may be because it’s not written by a professional sportswriter, but by a guy whose day job is professional librarian in Los Angeles.

Aside from Bob’s article, the most important thing you need to know is this:

Yes, the vuvuzela, that air horn which gave the broadcasts of the last World Cup in South Africa so much zing if you liked them and so much unpleasant background noise if you didn’t, has been banned from all stadiums in Brazil for the duration of the tournament. There was an attempt to replace them with a quieter gourd-shaped thing called a caxirola, but

On April 28, during the Bahia championship match between Bahía and Vitoria held at the World Cup Stadium, fans furious with the result threw dozens of these instruments on the field, in what the press dubbed the “revolt of the caxirolas”.

So none of these either, alas!