Noticia nº73.379

/noticias.info/ by FIFAworldcup.com

Millions and millions of people around the planet are impatiently counting down the hours until the 2006 FIFA World Cup Germany™ gets under way. With football fever taking a grip from England to Ecuador, FIFAworldcup.com reveals the weird and wonderful effects the biggest show on Earth is having on its inhabitants.

FIFA World Cup fever comes in many shapes and sizes, not to mention colours and flavours. Just ask the civil registrar in Berlin Mitte, where football-crazy couples intending to get married in June can sign up for a special themed ceremony. Ceremonies will be performed in the city’s TV tower which has been decked out as a giant football and there will be FIFA World Cup shirts for the bride and groom, witnesses and guests.

Supermodel Claudia Schiffer has a similarly attractive offer to make to fans in no rush to tie the knot. The stunning blonde appears on advertising hoardings all over the country dressed in nothing but a German flag while enticing onlookers with the slogan "Come over to my place".

Balls and beer
Not surprisingly, FIFA World Cup madness has taken a hold outside the host nation as well. England, the birthplace of football, is a case in point, and there is nothing an English football fan likes more than watching the game in the pub with friends.

Little wonder then that the number of people applying for jobs in pubs up and down the country has rocketed in the last few weeks. The Independent newspaper recently investigated the phenomenon and asked business management graduate Helen McCormack to explain her motives for wanting to pull pints: "It's a nightmare getting a decent spot in the pub. If I get the job, I’ll probably have the best position. It’s even better than going to the game."

For others, though, the simple fact of even being able to watch the games on TV is cause for celebration. That was surely what Bolivia president Evo Morales was thinking of when he announced that all the matches at Germany 2006 would be broadcast on free-to-air television available in remote rural areas inhabited by Indians and peasant farmers.

Until the president’s intervention, only cable companies, whose subscribers account for 15 per cent of the population, had the rights to view all the action from Germany.

Carnival time
The football lovers of Bad Kissingen, the town chosen by Ecuador as their base for the tournament, could hardly believe their eyes when they arrived at the South Americans' first open training session.

Greeting the bemused locals was a man dressed as a woman, shouting and tottering around on stilts, and surrounded by a group of performers in traditional costume – one of them dressed as a devil with a blue mask. Behind them an Andean band provided the musical accompaniment with guitars and wind instruments. The motive for the colourful spectacle was none other than the festival of San Pedro and San Pablo, a very popular celebration in Ecuador that now has a sizeable following in a corner of Germany.

No journey through South America would be complete without a stopover in Brazil. The land of the five-time winners is busy preparing to celebrate another FIFA World Cup success, and as a MasterCard survey reveals, no expense is being spared. Like their Mexican counterparts, the football-mad Brazilians will spend an extra 50 US dollars each on products related to their team.

Not just that, but there are also only two countries in the world where the big kick-off is generating more anticipation than in Brazil. Some 77 per cent of Brazilians are eagerly counting down the hours to Germany 2006, a figure exceeded only by the 79 per cent recorded in Mexico and Japan.

There is just one more thing we ought to tell you before we sign off: watch out for the teams in red. According to a study conducted by the University of Durham, teams wearing red may enjoy an advantage on the field of play, it being a colour "subliminally associated with aggression and male dominance as it is linked in nature with testosterone".

So there you have it. Make sure you keep a close eye on Angola, Trinidad and Tobago, Switzerland, Spain, Costa Rica, Korea Republic and Portugal.