Wherever you are in the world next month, you won’t be far from the football world cup coverage. This year, the FIFA World Cup competition returns to Brazil for the first time since 1950 and die-hard footie fans have been making their travel plans to be a part of it for months and perhaps years leading up to the first match on 12 June in Sao Paulo, when host nation Brazil plays Croatia.

Today, Sao Paulo is Brazil’s biggest city and a financial and business hub for the nation. Fittingly, though, it’s also the birthplace of Brazilian football as it’s here that a British descendant called Charles Miller lived. Miller introduced football to the city in 1894 and the game spread in popularity throughout the country.

For the 2014 World Cup, Brazil has already long been the favourite to win on betting sites like Betfair and others. If you want to have a bit of a punt on the outcome, you can find out the latest odds at betfair.com. As well as choosing to back the nation you think might win, you can take out all kinds of other bets on Betfair, such as top goalscorer of the tournament, Group forecasts, Winner and Golden Boot doubles.

Unless you’re already in Brazil or have plane tickets booked that are taking you that way anyway, it’s a bit too late to get over there to see the World Cup in person this time. But don’t let that worry you, wherever you are, you’ll find plenty of places with big screens showing all the matches, and probably a similar party atmosphere to the one that will be in Brazil itself. There will be few places on earth that remain free of World Cup fever during the month of June 2014!