Police clashed with protesters in São Paulo, striking airport workers disrupted traffic in Rio de Janeiro and hackers took aim at government websites ahead of yesterday’s opening match of the World Cup.
Yet in spite of those incidents, excitement began to overwhelm football-crazed Brazil as the five-times winner of the World Cup prepared to kick off the tournament on home soil for the first time in 64 years.
Riot police cleared about 200 protesters trying to block a main road providing access to the São Paulo stadium where the opening match against Croatia was scheduled to start at 5pm, injuring four including a producer of US cable channel CNN, according to local media reports.