HAPPY CHRISTMAS, FOOTBALL fans.
For the next month it’s all about the World Cup, so slap on some suncream, shake off the sand, stick on a samba beat and join us for a chat ahead of tonight’s big kick-off.
The opening ceremony is at 7pm, with Brazil v Croatia at 9pm — so whether you’re still stuck in the office, on the way home or getting the dinner ready, we’ve got you covered.
Email us at sport@thescore.ie, tweet us @thescore_ie or with the hashtag #ScoreWCHangout, post a message to Facebook, or leave a comment below.
Let’s party.
Are you excited? Because we’re excited.
For the last few days, TheScore.ie offices have been getting giddier and giddier and today, we’re practically on our summer holidays.
Ben thought he was getting on a plane to Brazil to cheer on Messi and the lads — but sadly, he’s stuck here with us!
For the next two hours, we’ll be chatting all things football. Come and join us – it’s better craic than watching the Six One news and counting down to kick-off.
First things first (piggybacking on a conversation that’s already started in the comments section) — who did you get in your office sweepstake?
All the good teams were still left when the hat came around to me, but I still managed to pull Russia. I reckon my boys will be on the plane home after the last 16.
A few more of you have been sharing your sweepstakes pain:
Colm O’Callaghan: Got Ivory Coast and South Korea, isn’t filling me with confidence either.
Matt Cooper is getting in on the Switzerland love too. Maybe we can adopt them as TheScore.ie’s World Cup team?
Instead of doing any actual work, we’ve been having a bit of World Cup trivia.
No prizes here, only pride — who scored the first goal of the last World Cup? And the one before that? And the one before that?
No Googling, we’re just here for the craic.
As regular readers will have noticed over the last few days, our man Mikey Stafford is out in Brazil for the duration of the tournament.
Here’s today’s dispatch from Salvador. Mikey will be at Spain v Holland tomorrow night, in case you needed to someone to direct your jealousy towards this evening:
Even if you had not been waiting for this day for the past four years, it was obvious World Cup 2014 was upon us this morning — it was as plain as fireworks at dawn, as clear as the sound of drums at 6.30am.
Salvador has woken up to the tournament and an exceedingly vocal portion of the population are excited.
I want to work wherever Sean is!
Sean Lynch: Got Spain, Cameroon and Holland, in work today (small company ) happy with that.
If you’re still struggling with that little teaser, here’s a hint. Any guesses?
GOAL BAFANA BAFANA! A GOAL FOR SOUTH AFRICA – A GOAL FOR ALL AFRICA!
Congrats to anyone who guessed that it was Siphewe Tshabalala who scored this stonker in the opening game of the last World Cup; even bigger congrats to anyone who managed to spell his name right!
Here you go. As Jimbo would say, woof!
One thing that I will say about Brazil is that it makes for some stunning photos. Here are a couple that have come in to us today:
More of your sweepstake stories coming in. I have to say, I like the way Puddlian’s draw works…
The Puddlian: Did a sweepstake in work. Top 16 seeds & latter 16 seeds. One from each half per person. 80% to winners & 20% for worst team in whole tournament. Got Argentina & Nigeria so pretty content with that!
Darach Brennan: Got South Korea, Croatia and Argentina in a sweepstakes between friends. Pretty happy with the latter!
Mikey has dialed up the fax machine from Salvador to send in this update. He’s just trying to make us jealous now… which wouldn’t be hard!
“Non-approved bottle of water confiscated on way into the stadium. Luckily this long, dark room is wonderfully air-conditioned. Bringing a change of shirt after my 30-minute walk was a good idea.
“Now, Chelsea new boy Fabregas as a false nine or Diego Costa up front? We’ll ask Vincent of the Forest at 2.30pm our time. 6.30 GMT.”
If you have any questions for Mikey — questions other than “how class is Brazil?”, he’ll be hosting one of these hangouts in the coming days.
We have buckets of amazing prizes to give away — think tablets and phones — thanks to our friends at Budweiser, and we’ll also have a few very special guest hosts between now and the final on 13 June.
Here’s a clue to the first one. He’ll be in the office on Tuesday:
Don’t get too excited — but there’s less than three hours to kick-off in Brazil v Croatia, and less than 40 minutes to the opening ceremony at 7pm Irish time.
Is now a good time to remind people what (nearly) happened the last time Brazil opened a World Cup?
We’ll just leave this one here. Sorry, Scottish friends:
Eoin O’Callaghan has been looking ahead to to tonight and picked out three people who could end up playing a starring role.
Mercifully, Pitbull and J-Lo do not feature.
This is the way all press conferences should be conducted:
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American stats nerds FiveThirtyEight have been crunching the numbers on tonight’s opener. Somebody really needs to tell them that football is decided on the pitch, not on paper, and certainly not on some fancy-dan graph.
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We’re going to wrap this baby up in a couple of minutes so you can concentrate on the TV but we’ll be here all night (and tomorrow night, and the night after) if you’re looking to keep up to date with anything you missed.
Before we go, here’s a quick look at where you can watch tonight’s action:
- RTÉ Two (7pm) - Billo is joined by Dunphy, Giles and Brady for the opening ceremony and Brazil v Croatia (9pm kick-off).
- UTV (7pm) - Adrian Chiles has Fabio Cannavaro, Lee Dixon and Patrick Vieira in the studio.
Before we go, let’s get some predictions in for tonight’s big game. No love for Croatia – does anyone see a shock?
- Ben Blake: Brazil 2-1 Croatia
- Niall Kelly: Brazil 3-1 Croatia
- Fintan O’Toole: Brazil 1-1 Croatia
- Sean Farrell: Brazil 2-0 Croatia
- Murray Kinsella: Brazil 2-1 Croatia
- Eamon Donoghue: Brazil 4-0 Croatia
- Eoin O’Callaghan: Brazil 3-1 Croatia
Here’s a quick look at what lies in store tonight.
We’ll leave you with this — no host team has ever lost their opening match at the World Cup.
Thanks for reading and for commenting. We’ll have all the news, action and reaction across the night and we’ll be back at the same time tomorrow for another World Cup hangout.
Enjoy the football – we certainly will!
