The world of soccer is showing us once again just how violent it can be to attend a game, or wear your team’s colors on enemy turf. On Thursday, a group of Brazilians wearing hoodies attacked English soccer fans in São Paulo, a few feet away from a bar that was holding an official FIFA Fan Fest event.

Shocking Documentary Qatar's World Cup by ESPN E60

Brazil’s efforts to clean up the favelas for the World Cup have led to a surprising development: Due to property laws, many slum residents now own some of the city’s best real estate.

An infographic helping you choose the right team.

When the US men’s soccer team played Ghana in Natal, Brazil yesterday, the temperature reached the mid-80s and the humidity outlook was, basically: Expect your sweat glands to sprout sweat glands. But the crazy thing about Brazil is that while it might feel like the dead of summer in one city, it could very well feel a crisp spring day in another. This unpredictability is tough enough on athletes, who ideally train in conditions that reflect the climate they’ll be competing in.

Exactly how much cheating goes on in soccer is hard to quantify, but the psychologist Chris Stride has collected some data.

Brazil arrested a suspected Mexican drug trafficker on his way to watch his national soccer team play in the World Cup. He bought a ticket under his name. Jose Diaz-Barajas, 49, was arrested at Rio de Janeiro’s Tom Jobim airport last night as he boarded a plane to Fortaleza, where Mexico plays Brazil today, Luiz Cravo Dorea, head of international cooperation at the Federal Police, said.

ESPN may have lost the broadcast rights to the World Cup, but the network is making the most of its last hurrah with the United States-Ghana match turning in a very solid 7.0 rating. That goes down as the highest-rated men's soccer match ever on the cable channel. The 2011 Women's World Cup Final scored a 7.4 rating.

Every four years, Brazilians decorate their streets in green and yellow, celebrating the arrival of the most anticipated sports tournament in the country. With the kick-off for the FIFA World Cup in Brazil less than one month away, the country's passion for football should be pulsating more than ever. But there are some signs to the contrary. "World Cup for whom?" read the words painted on a wall on a street in Sao Paulo.

Creating nine million stickers a day, Panini’s South American HQ is capitalising on the collecting craze and debunking the conspiracy theories

Brazilians may love football. But many of them are not welcoming the World Cup, costing their unequal country $11 billion, without a fight.

An early goal by Clint Dempsey -- the sixth fastest in World Cup history -- gave the United States national team a shocking lead against Ghana in the teams' opening game of Group G. And a late goal by John Brooks, an inexperienced American defender who came on as second-half substitute, earned the Americans a victory.

English Goalkeeper Reaction after Pirlo's Free Kick.

English Goalkeeper Reaction after Pirlo's Free Kick.

The United States and Ghana are more or less evenly matched on the field. But plans to broadcast today's World Cup match between the two nations show how far apart their economies remain. When the teams kick off at 6pm in New York and 10pm in Accra, the most pressing concern for American soccer fans may be...

Brazilians may love football. But many of them are not welcoming the World Cup, costing their unequal country $11 billion, without a fight.

Munich Re underwriting manager Andrew Duxbury has modeled earthquakes, floods, crime, terrorism, and other worst-case scenarios for Brazil

It looks like a bottle of mace and comes out like shaving cream. What is it and why do refs have it?

China may be the world’s most populous nation but a men’s soccer giant it is not. Indeed, the nation, ranked 103 in FIFA’s rankings — that’s one below Equatorial Guinea — didn’t even make this year’s World Cup finals. Or the last one. Or the one before that. So how do China’s beleaguered football fans feel? Resigned, mostly. “If China were in the World Cup,” says Chen Xiao, a football journalist from Shijiazhuang, in northeastern China, “it would contradict the laws of football.”

London’s Sunday Times reported this past weekend on what it called the “Plot to buy the World Cup.” The story (behind a paywall) details what many already suspected: that FIFA officials who awarded the 2022 World Cup to Qatar had been bribed. The paper’s accusations are based, it says, on millions of documents and e-mails that came from a senior FIFA official.