Not long now. Starting Thursday, the world – including millions and millions here in North America – will focus its attention on the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. Not just soccer fans. Everyone.
And here at MLS Digital, we're as excited and ready as anyone. We've got an incredibly comprehensive coverage plan in store for North American soccer fans, from original video series to live MatchCenters of every World Cup match to regular dispatches from our experts and personalities on the ground in Brazil.
We were with the US national team from the opening of their pre-World Cup camp in Palo Alto, Calif., through each of their three warm-up friendlies. Now our intrepid correspondents Nick Firchau and Andrew Wiebe are in São Paulo, Brazil, to cover Michael Bradley, Clint Dempsey & Co. as they make their final preparations for their matches against Ghana, Portugal, and Germany – and, hopefully, beyond.
It all starts at our World Cup section, your go-to place to navigate to all of our best World Cup stuff, including news, schedules, scores, stats, and standings. Plus, we've put together complete team guides, including which players to watch and each country's MLS ties. You'd be surprised how many there are.
Hopefully, you have already seen a few episodes of our exclusive video series Brazil Bound Presented by Castrol GTX High Mileage. We're thrilled to have former MLS midfielder & USMNT assistant coach Jesse Marsch join MLSsoccer.com analysts Simon Borg, Matt Doyle, and Jason Saghini – and yours truly – to help break it all down. Together, we'll keep you up to date on everything going on, with daily reports from Brazil on the USMNT and other nations, in-depth match analysis, creative features and exclusive interviews with players, coaches, and soccer personalities. Check out the latest episode:
New York City will also be the headquarters for Studio 14 East, the hub for our intrepid team of editors, videographers, statisticians and graphic artists who'll make sure you don't miss any of the top stories, the controversies, the color and the downright bizarre happening at the World Cup.
Hopefully, also, you filled out your bracket in the Brazil Bracket Challenge, allowing fans to compete to predict the results, and several other exclusive content series, including a countdown of the Top 10 moments in USMNT World Cup History since 1990 and a World Cup 101 series so you can help your soccer-newbie friends enjoy the big event.
During the tournament itself, MLSsoccer.com will run our cutting-edge digital match experience to provide in-depth live data and social curation for all 64 World Cup matches. That's right, not just the USMNT and CONCACAF matches. All of them.
Over on FutbolMLS.com, we have a similarly amazing experience for fans who want to get it all in Spanish. Editor Kristel Valencia and her team have up-to-the-minute reports from Brazil, daily episodes of the Zona Mixta video series, expert analysis of the matches, and exclusive interviews with the likes of Honduras's Oscar Boniek Garcia and Mexican national team manager Miguel Herrera. Check out this piece with San Jose's Honduran center back Victor Bernardez.
There's more, though. Our friends at KICKTV have a whole host of content planned, with former MLS & USMNT defender Jimmy Conrad on the ground in Brazil, taking you inside all the best games and introducing you to the coolest soccer people at the World Cup. If you haven't already checked out Jimmy's "Group of Death" travel series, do it. Do it now!
Other KICKTV programming will include Brazil Daily, which is bringing fans daily news and analysis from the KICKTV studio overlooking Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana Beach; and the very cool "World Cup Crash Course" series, created in partnership with Howler Magazine.
Wow, this is going to be fun. Join us.
Greg Lalas
Editor in Chief
