Roughly four years ago, I had a flight connection at Santos Dumont Airport, in Rio de Janeiro. The world cup was going on in Germany and, as we approached to land, I could see both the Christ Statue and the Sugar Loaf specially decorated for the occasion. The Sugar Loaf had a beautiful impressive beam of light that rose hundreds of meters in the air, in Brazil’s national coulours. I managed to escape in the few minutes between flights and got to a spot right beside the airport to register the view that would be the first picture in this project.

A couple weeks ago I returned to that place, while taking the opportunity to photograph in the emptied streets of Rio during the first match of this year´s Word Cup. Though the place looks almost the same, except for the missing gas pumps, a lot has changed ever since. This time the cup happens here. Despite all types of catastrophic prophecies from the old traditional media concerning the event, it is on its way to be the best world cup ever. According to the big media outlets, by now we´d be right into a period of mayhem, with stadiums that wouldn´t be ready in time for the event, absolute chaos in transports and all sorts of biblical plagues affecting us. It turns out that, despite some minor setbacks, things are running smoothly and almost everybody involved is happy about it, specially us, the hosts. Go Brazil!