MIRED in controversy, unpopular we are told even with many in the host nation, today’s opening of the 2014 World Cup could be a damp squib – but most likely it will be the start of a wonderful few weeks of sporting excellence.

Despite all the challenges the game faces, not least pitted against its ruling body FIFA, football continues to confound its critics.

By now the huge cost of staging the World Cup, the absurd antics of some of its top players, the obscene amounts of money paid in wages, should have seen the sport implode, destroyed by the weight of its own pomposity and extravagance.

And yet this is not the case. The so- called ‘beautiful game’ continues to have the power to hold the world spellbound. The greater the scandals that engulf it, the deeper the crisis, the greedier the players appear, the more people who are sucked into the drama that surrounds world football.

Today’s opening ceremony will, this paper predicts, herald the start of three weeks of tremendous sporting drama.

And, for a time, even the most critical of its detractors will fall silent as the world plays homage to the phenomenon that is the World Cup.