2014 FIFA World Cup – 32 teams, millions of fans, one passion

The 20th FIFA World Cup, an international men’s football tournament also commonly known as “soccer” or “futbol” is currently taking place in Brazil. It is an event highly anticipated by millions of football fans worldwide. For them, it is not just another tournament. It is football – it is life. It is a month packed with highly competitive games that provide incredible emotions to observers. And no matter the country, language, or culture they represent, there is a passion that unites football fans around the world – a passion for football.

This year will be the second time that Brazil has hosted the competition, the previous being in 1950. Brazil was elected unchallenged as the host nation in 2007 after the international football federation, FIFA, decreed that the tournament would be staged in South America for the first time since 1978 in Argentina, and the fifth time overall.

The national teams of 31 countries advanced through qualification competitions that began in June 2011 to participate with the host nation Brazil in the final tournament. A total of 64 matches are to be played in twelve cities across Brazil in either new or redeveloped stadiums, with the tournament beginning with a group stage. For the first time at a World Cup Finals, the matches will use goal-line technology.

With the host country, all world champion teams since the first World Cup in 1930 (Argentina, England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Uruguay) have qualified for this competition. Spain is the defending champion, having defeated the Netherlands 1-0 in the 2010 World Cup final to win its first World title. South American teams won all the previous four World Cups staged in South America.

The 32 participating teams were to be drawn into the eight groups of the group stage. In preparation for this, the teams were organized into four pots with the seven highest-ranked teams joining host nation Brazil in the seeded pot. As with the previous tournaments, FIFA aimed to create groups which maximized geographic separation and therefore the unseeded teams were arranged into pots based on geographic considerations.Under the draw procedure, one randomly drawn team was firstly relocated from Pot 4 to Pot 2 to create four equal pots of eight teams.

Squads As with the 2010 tournament, each team’s squad consists of 23 players (three of whom must be goalkeepers). Each participating national association had to confirm their final 23-player squad no later than 10 days before the start of the tournament. Teams are permitted to make late replacements in the event of serious injury, at any time up to 24 hours before their first game. Referees In March 2013, FIFA published a list of 52 prospective referees, each paired with two assistant referees, from all six-football confederations for the tournament. On 14 January 2014, the FIFA Referees Committee appointed 25 referee trios and eight support duos representing 43 different countries for the tournament.

INTERNATIONAL E-TECH 

Ethnic Technologies provides two international versions of the flagship E-Tech software: E-Tech Canada and E-Tech Brazil. Each international encoder identifies Ethnicity, Religion, and Language Preference on our clients’ Canadian or Brazilian customer data, respectively. International versions of E-Tech are designed based on research into name, geographic, and immigration trends in a specific country. This enables international versions of E-Tech to most accurately identify these demographics in particular international populations.

About Ethnic Technologies, LLC

Ethnic Technologies, LLC is the platinum standard in multicultural marketing.The result of over 40 years of continuous ethnic, religious and language preference research, E-Tech allows clients to segment their database by ethnicity, religion, language preference and Hispanic country of origin more accurately and comprehensively than any other approach. E-Tech incorporates a unique approach for identifying the different African American Consumers. After identifying by their specific names, E-Tech does a neighborhood analysis using multi-sourced information compiled from our research group. From that data, E-Tech identifies African American individuals’

Contact Karen Sinisi, Director Of Sales at 866-333-8324 ext.117

or Karens@ethnictechnologies.com. Visit www.ethnictechnologies.com