The 2014 World Cup will cost a staggering minimum of 10 billion US dollars for Brazil to organise, the majority of which will be borne by the public sector.

It has been a long time since Brazil hosted a major tournament, and a lot of the stadiums require work, including of course the legendary Maracana, which was built for the last World Cup that Brazil hosted, 53 years ago.

The tournament is expected to be held across 18 cities, and so the money spent on World Cup development will greatly improvement infrastructure all over the country (hence the decision to make it a largely public sector undertaking).

The outcome of the tournament will be interesting, since it was only after hosting their last World Cup that Brazilians went football crazy, and the tournament will return now to the country which produces some of the sport's finest moments and people, both on the field, and off it. 

Statistics from the European Football Players' Labour Market have shed some interesting light on the trends in the major European league. With all the discussions in England about the lack of English players making the national team unsuccessful, and Blatter's looming attempts at imposing homegrown rules, statistics from other leagues throw the whole issue in doubt.

The 2006-07 review was based on 2,744 players employed by the 98 clubs in the 5 top European leagues (England, France, Spain, Italy and Germany), and 24.3% of these were "homegrown". This was a 2.5% decrease on 2005-06 results, and France was the worst affected with a 6.8% DECREASE in home-grown players, although they still had the highest percentage of homegrown players with 33.3%.

The lowest percentage was in Italy, where only 14.6% of the players were homegrown. Take note of this all those people who complain about foreigners ruining the English national team - who won the last World Cup?

Overall, the amount of foreigners in these leagues has increased by 0.5% to 38.9% overall, with the Premier League being the most international, with 55.5% foreigners.

Regarding the foreigners with the most numbers, Brazil is the most represented country with 140 players. The USA has had the highest increase in exported players of any nation, and foreigners from Eastern Europe, North America, Asia & Oceania have increased overall, with the number of Western Europeans and Latin Americans decreasing. There are 92 nationalities represented in these top 5 leagues.