The FIFA executive committee voted on Tuesday that the 2014 edition of the World Cup will be hosted by Brazil. FIFA implemented a rotation system after which the event is to be hosted by all the continents in succession. It was South America’s turn and Brazil seems to be the only country with the capacity to organize and host a World Cup.

The other nations from South America that hosted the World Cup were Uruguay, Chile and Argentina, but at that time the tournament had sixteen competing teams at the most. Brazil also hosted the World Cup in 1950 when it unexpectedly lost in the final to Uruguay.

In this day and age, the only country in South America that already has an infrastructure capable of dealing with the 32-team format of a World Cup is Brazil. The other country considered capable of organizing such an event would be Colombia, but due to its current social and political unrests, its bid was out of the question.

"The executive committee has decided unanimously to give the responsibility, not only the right, but the responsibility to organize FIFA's World Cup 2014 to the country Brazil," said FIFA president Joseph Blatter.

The World Cup trophy was handed by Blatter to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, present at the event held in Zurich, and he will eventually hand it to the captain of the winning team.

"Football is not only a sport for us. It's more than that," Silva said. "Football for us is a passion, a national passion."

Da Silva also talked about the plans of his country to make efforts in order to stage the event as one should. The president said Brazil will do its "homework" with great pride and added:

"If everything works out well, we will win once again a World Cup."

Brazil won the cup five times. Their last triumph was at the 2002 edition held in South-Korea and Japan.

FIFA’s inspection team has already made a trip to the South American country in late August and after the inspections gave Brazil the thumbs up.

Eighteen Brazilian cities have announced their bid to host matched of the World Cup. Four of those will have to be rebuilt from scratch, the inspectors said. FIFA made it very clear that Brazil will have to make a considerable nation-wide effort in order to meet the standards that are already very high after the last Word Cup hosted by Germany.

The re-building of the four stadiums and the renovation of the others would cost Brazil about 1.1 billion dollars.
The next World Cup is being staged by South Africa in 2010.