Today's Argentina-Germany FIFA World Cup final kicks off in Rio de Janeiro at 3:00pm ET, and police on Friday said that they will be "mounting the biggest security effort in the city's history, with plans for nearly 26,000 police officers on the streets." They are "downplaying the possibility of violence -- but they aren't taking any chances either" (WSJ.com, 11/7). This World Cup "bounced, bucked, lurched, swerved and swayed along the
way," but the tournament has "reached
its destination with the wheels more or less still on the bus" (SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE, 7/13).
The N.Y. TIMES runs a front-page piece with the header, "Biggest Scorer In World Cup? Maybe Univision." The tournament "has been a record-breaking event for Univision, which has dominated its TV rivals in several of America’s largest cities" -- L.A., Miami and Houston (N.Y. TIMES, 7/13).
The SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS features a story about the preparations in Google's World Cup war room for today's match. R/GA London Design Dir Pete Jupp, whose digital ad agency is working with Google during the tournament, said, "Once we start getting the data, we'll decide how to tell that story and find interesting ways to visualize it, not just for football fans but for everyone" (SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, 7/13).
