Will Brazil have its stadia ready for the World Cup?

Sky Sports reporter Geraint Hughes examines the growing controversy surrounding World Cup stadia in Brazil.

Brazil 2014 Organisers and FIFA voiced private concerns that the World Cup and football would be overshadowed by mass protests on the streets of Brazil's cities. The country is a very young democracy, it was a dictatorship until the mid-1980s and successive governments since have let the people down having promised much. It appears that the focus that hosting the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Rio Olympics brought to the country has angered vast swathes of the population, as public money gets earmarked for World Cup or Olympic projects at the expense of crumbling transport infrastructure, education and healthcare concerns. On the flip side, irritation, annoyance and anger at the cost of staging the World Cup does get put to one side in Brazil. Football does this. Football has already done this. For 90 minutes on the 30th June earlier this year, Brazil thrashed Spain to win the final of the Confederations Cup. No one protested then. They did before and after, but not while Brazil are playing. The people take huge pride in the success of their football team. To say football is like a religion in Brazil is, I'm afraid to say, a hackneyed cliché... but I can't think of a better way of describing what the game means to the Brazilian population. FIFA has encountered problems before in staging World Cup tournaments, I vividly recall Sepp Blatter and Jerome Valcke saying at a news conference in an hotel opposite Copacabana Beach in Rio last summer that the paint was often still wet on the opening day of previous World Cups. They weren't being flippant or making a joke, just realistic that organising a World Cup is difficult and that the best laid plans often get shelved. With just over six months until the start of the World Cup, the current plans will doubtless be ripped up and re-written, but Brazil 2014 may well be the most challenging World Cup ever for its organisers.