Joshua Sur­tees

Brazil­ian am­bas­sador to T&T Paulo Bozzi is­sued a last-minute can­cel­la­tion yes­ter­day af­ter­noon and in­stead sent his deputy to of­fi­cial­ly "open" the World Cup at a packed bar in Wood­brook.Ac­cord­ing to em­bassy staff lim­ing at the All Out bar at the Queen's Park Oval ahead of Brazil's open­ing fix­ture with Croa­t­ia in Sao Pao­lo, Bozzi had suf­fered big match "nerves" and stayed home to en­ter­tain am­bas­sadors at his of­fi­cial res­i­dence, St Clair.

Regi­na Bit­ten­court, the em­bassy's deputy head of mis­sion, filled in for the am­bas­sador, giv­ing a short speech in front of the throng of foot­ball fans.

Brazil fans in bright yel­low repli­ca jer­seys were teem­ing in the bar. Amongst them, Carib girls in tight white jeans wan­dered around show­ing off wash­board stom­achs and pearly white smiles.The stage was set ear­ly as fans piled in be­fore the 2 pm open­ing cer­e­mo­ny, a typ­i­cal­ly un­der­whelm­ing af­fair, and an enor­mous Brazil flag was draped over a win­dow while the flags of the oth­er com­pet­ing na­tions (32 in to­tal) were hung all over the bar, cre­at­ing a sea of colour.

Out on the bal­cony, speak­ers boomed out the elec­tron­ic dance mu­sic of the open­ing show and Jen­nifer Lopez tot­tered around the pitch in stilet­to heels and a green se­quinned mi­ni cat­suit while US Lati­no rap­per Pit­bull waved his hands about.

Xavier Alexan­der, an Eng­lish stu­dent vis­it­ing T&T on hol­i­day, ex­pressed his be­muse­ment as to why Lopez, a Puer­to Ri­can, was the star of the show."I've no idea what she's do­ing here," he said, "but that oth­er woman is a Brazil­ian pop star, I think."

He was right, it was Clau­dia Leitte, fa­mous in South Amer­i­ca though vir­tu­al­ly un­known any­where else.The 44-year-old Lopez looked in fine form de­spite sound prob­lems.

The sta­di­um, home to the Corinthi­ans team, looked re­splen­dent in the late af­ter­noon sun­shine. An ex­tra 12,000 seats had been added to in­crease its ca­pac­i­ty to 61,000.The ex­tra seats will be re­moved af­ter the World Cup is over.

In Port-of-Spain, a brief down­pour sent the Carib girls and limers run­ning in­to the bar where ex­cite­ment was mount­ing.But where was the am­bas­sador? The T&T Guardian told All Out's own­er Lau­rette Moses and gen­er­al man­ag­er Ver­nal Crooms said he wasn't com­ing. "Why not?" they cho­rused. Open­ing-night nerves, was the on­ly re­sponse we could give.

No fear. The sub­sti­tute, Bit­ten­court, who hails from Bahia in the north of Brazil, was a fine stand-in, rous­ing the crowd and de­clar­ing, diplo­mat­i­cal­ly: "Let the best team win," be­fore adding, less diplo­mat­i­cal­ly: "And I hope that's my coun­try, Brazil."

Asked what her favourite World Cup mem­o­ry was, Bit­ten­court told the Guardian: "I re­mem­ber the 1970 World Cup very well, even though I was young. There were peo­ple in the streets danc­ing and cel­e­brat­ing."

That great '70 side, fea­tur­ing Pele, Jairz­in­ho and Riv­eli­no, is con­sid­ered by foot­ball pun­dits to be one of the great­est World Cup sides of all time and Bit­ten­court re­calls meet­ing Pele lat­er in her ca­reer in Bu­dapest, where she was work­ing.

"He was re­ceived in Hun­gary like a head of state," she said.Of the cur­rent team's chances she said: "Fe­lipe Sco­lari (the Brazil coach) is in­to team­work, which is im­por­tant when you have a team of stars want­i­ng to act in­di­vid­u­al­ly. We have good play­ers and we would like to see a good per­for­mance."

On the protests tak­ing place across Brazil, she com­ment­ed: "Peo­ple should have protest­ed be­fore when we were bid­ding for it, not now. We are hosts and we need to wel­come peo­ple and have fun. Every­where our fans go in the world we have a par­ty and peo­ple love us. We must do that in our own coun­try more than ever."

Asked if she had spo­ken to friends and fam­i­ly back home and what the mood was like in her home town in Bahia, which has a strong African cul­ture and where Car­ni­val lasts five days and five nights, she con­firmed that peo­ple were very ex­cit­ed.She re­fused to give a pre­dic­tion, say­ing: "I can on­ly hope. Every side, even the weak­est, when they play against Brazil, they try very hard to beat us. If they do it's like they've won the cup."

As if to con­firm her fears, the hosts con­ced­ed the open­ing goal of the tour­na­ment through a Marce­lo own-goal af­ter just 11 min­utes.

Ney­mar, Brazil's tal­is­man, equalised just be­fore the half-hour and the host na­tion breathed a col­lec­tive sigh of re­lief. The match end­ed 3-1 in Brazil's favour, which in­clud­ed a penal­ty stun­ner from Ney­mar.