ENGLAND left-back Leighton Baines has revealed the squad have received a special good luck message from a music legend.
Baines, 29, is a self-confessed music nut, so when he found out ex-Smiths frontman Morrissey was staying the same Miami hotel as the England squad during their recent pre-World Cup camp, he had to introduce himself.
Baines told the Liverpool Echo: "I knew he had played in Miami that week, so I had a chat with him and he wished us good luck.
"I was a bit nervous about speaking to him because I didn't know how it would be received, nobody else other than Gary Neville knew who he was- I didn't know if he knew who I was!"
England were in the US city to play two friendlies in similar humid conditions to those they will face in Manaus when they open up their campaign against Italy on Saturday.
Both games ended in draws: 2-2 versus Ecuador and a fiery 0-0 the end result against a hard-hitting Honduras side.
SAO PAULO is being gripped by World Cup fever- in both positive and negative ways.
The host city, and venue for Brazil's opener with Croatia on Thursday night, has been plagued by protests, this time the city's metro staff.
Staff have been on strike since last Thursday, causing traffic chaos in Brazil's biggest city, and police used tear gas on some 300 protesters.
IN happier news, the city has developed an obsession with the official Panini stickers that accompany the tournament.
"Traders" are gathering outside Sao Paulo's MASP museum of arts, as well as markets all over the city, to swap duplicates, with trading prices expanding day on day.
Completed albums, an estimated eight million of which a week are being produced in Brazil, sell for well over £300 on eBay, and mathematicians at the University of Geneva have calculated that to complete a set, 899 packets of stickers are needed- an outlay of almost £450!
THE World Cup opening ceremony is to be kicked off by a paraplegic, whose identity is being kept a close-guarded secret, wearing a futuristic exo-skeleton suit.
The 'Iron Man'-esque suit is a first, allowing the user to control movement via brain activity, and the device will be used to kick the opening ball of the tournament.
Brazilian doctor Miguel Nicolelis has led a team of 156 scientists from around the world to create the suit, and with over 65,000 crammed into the Sao Paulo venue and 1bn watching around the world, it will be a very public debut for the suit.
A BANNER proclaiming Argentina to be the World Cup winners has been quickly removed from their Belo Horizonte base.
The message stated "Welcome future champions", and was hung on the gate of their compound to greet the players on their arrival by Argentine FA official Juan Carlos Crespi.
Following a visit by Argentine media, the sign has been replaced with a simple "Welcome".
