The World Cup schedule and start date for the 2014 tournament kicks off June 12 and has Brazil taking on Croatia to start things off and down below is a link to a full list of matches from Brazil and the locations of all the football games, which start up in just a few weeks for the worldwide soccer tournament.
The United States is stuck in the group of death and they will have a hard time getting past that, while Mexico, Cameroon and Croatia make up the group for the home nation. Landon Donovan was left off the US roster and that was a surprise to many and now that group has some attention, as Cristiano Ronaldo is in it as well and Jurgen Klinsmann will be facing his old Germany team when he takes the US into the tournament.
That first match on Thursday June 12 will kick things off for the tournament and Brazil has a nice route out of Group A and they will start at 4 pm on that first Thursday against Croatia. The games the next day on Friday will have the rest of Group A going and it will also start up with Group B, as Mexico and Cameroon face off and then Spain and the Netherlands, while Chile and Australia also have a matchup.
The Saturday matches has Colombia and Greece kicking off group C and then Uruguay and Costa Rica will play ahead of England and Italy and that will be one of the best matches of the tournament. The schedule has a number of great opening matches to start the tournament, including the United States taking on Ghana in the group of death and some other matches includes the Mexican team taking on Cameroon, Chile playing Australia as well as England and Italy, Colombia against Greece, Spain against the Netherlands and Germany against Portugal. The travel schedule is expected to be tough for teams and fans and the US has the most to deal with.
Check here for the full schedule and more on the World Cup from ESPN and SWR.
There are 43 matches overall that will be on the ESPN channel and all will be streaming online and the rest are distributed to the other channels in the ESPN family of networks. The company is pulling out all the stops for their coverage and they are expecting to have everything fully ready for the event, while Brazil is still actually doing construction on many of the venues.
Some of the top games for ESPN on the schedule includes the opener against Croatia for Brazil and that will be on June 12, while they also have England and Italy and that will be a huge match. Spain plays against the Netherlands on ESPN and the channel also has England Uruguay as well as the United States playing against Ghana and that is expected to be one of the most anticipated matches of the tournament.
The US has the Group of death in the World Cup, as they must play against Ghana, Germany and Portugal in the group stage at the WC in June. The 30-man roster starts camp with the team this week and the final rosters are coming by June 2 and that makes these workouts very important for the team and for Klinsmann. The US team has a busy schedule coming up and they play against Azerbaijan at San Francisco's Candlestick Park on May 27, Turkey at Red Bull Arena in Harrison, N.J., on June 1, and Nigeria at EverBank Field in Jacksonville, Fla., on June 7 for the exhibition games heading into the Cup.
The team opens the World Cup with a matchup against Ghana and that will be at Natal on June 16 and the team later will play Ronaldo and Portugal in the Amazon venue and the US team has the farthest travel among any nation in the event.
