Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Friday signed government guarantees required by FIFA for candidates to stage the World Cup.
Silva said Brazil has "nearly" guaranteed it will host the event in 2014 and redress the "unforgettable defeat" it suffered in the 1950 World Cup, the only Cup the five-time champions have ever hosted.
Brazil is the lone candidate for the 2014 Cup after Colombia withdrew its bid in April.
A successful presentation of the Pan American Games in Rio de Janeiro next month will boost Brazil's chances of receiving the 2014 Cup when FIFA's executive committee meets in November, Silva said at the presidential palace.
"I am sure they will be an extraordinary success," he said.
"Brazil will definitively have the credentials to stage bigger events like the soccer World Cup, he said.
The FIFA guarantees will be delivered on July 31 to Ricardo Teixeira, president of the Brazilian Soccer Confederation. They include requirements ranging from ensuring visas and customs entry for foreigners to tax breaks for hotels to encourage private-sector participation.
Construction or remodeling of stadiums is taken up separately between FIFA and the Brazilian Soccer Confederation, Sports Minster Orlando Silva said.
"The World Cup is almost ours," Silva said.
Silva, who was born in 1945, was five years old when Brazil suffered its greatest soccer trauma. Widely favored to win the 1950 final, the team was upset 2-1 by Uruguay before a packed crowd at Rio's Maracana, the world's largest soccer arena, built especially for the Cup.
Fifty-seven years after "that unfortunately unforgettable defeat by Uruguay in Maracana, Brazil has all the conditions to hold in 2014 the second World Cup in its history," he said.
Silva added that "the government and the people are united in this task."
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